Working or not Working in Commercial Farms and Uptake of Agricultural Technologies in Rural Tanzania

Abstract

Commercial farms investment plays important role in agricultural technology spillovers but less is known on specific channels influencing neighboring farmer’s uptake of agricultural technologies. This study analyzed the effect of farmer’s working in commercial farms on agricultural technologies uptake intensity. Multiphased study design was used to randomly and proportionately to collect a sample of 1,203 farmers from three independent samples in Karatu, Iringa and Njombe. Nearest neighbor matching estimator was used to estimate the effect of working in commercial farms after testing for a balanced matching and control samples. In Karatu the intensity of agricultural technology uptake of farmer worked in commercial farm was 0.28 larger but not statistically significant. But if the farmer had not worked uptake intensity is reduced to 0.27 which was statistically significant at 5% p-value. In Iringa the intensity of agricultural technology uptake to farmer working in commercial farm on average is 0.45(P< 0.05) significantly large. In Njombe, on average agricultural uptake intensity is 0.20 not statistically significant compared to uptake intensity of 0.23 which is statistically significant at 5% p-value had he/she not worked in commercial farms. It implies in areas where commercial farm producing different crops to neighboring farmers uptake of technologies is more on soil conservation than growing new crop or seed varieties. But in areas without landscarcity and investor’s crop being similar to crops produced by small-holder farmer, it was found farmers grow new crops or new seed varieties, use soil conservation practices, tractor and ox-plough. It was concluded that commercial farms should be promoted while considering crops produced by neighboring smallholder farms and land availability to farmers, if uptake of agricultural technologies to neighboring farmers is the policy expectation. Keywords: employment, commercial farms, uptake of agricultural technology, matching estimation DOI: 10.7176/JESD/13-14-08 Publication date: July 31 st 2022