Dial “A” for agriculture: a review of information and communication technologies for agricultural extension in developing countries

Agriculture can serve as an important engine for economic growth in developing countries, yet yields in these countries have lagged far behind those in developed countries for decades. One potential mechanism for increasing yields is the use of improved agricultural technologies, such as fertilizers, seeds, and cropping techniques. Public sector programs have attempted to overcome information‐related barriers to technological adoption by providing agricultural extension services. While such programs have been widely criticized for their limited scale, sustainability, and impact, the rapid spread of mobile phone coverage in developing countries provides a unique opportunity to facilitate technological adoption via information and communication technology (ICT)‐based extension programs. This article outlines the potential mechanisms through which ICT could facilitate agricultural adoption and the provision of extension services in developing countries. It then reviews existing programs using ICT for agriculture, categorized by the mechanism (voice, text, internet, and mobile money transfers) and the type of services provided. Finally, we identify potential constraints to such programs in terms of design and implementation, and conclude with some recommendations for implementing field‐based research on the impact of these programs on farmers’ knowledge, technological adoption, and welfare.     

Adoption of Agricultural E-Marketing: Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior

In this study, the authors used the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as a base model to determine how attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control predict the intention of agricultural services professionals to adopt e-marketing of agricultural commodities. A convenient sample of 146 professionals from the public (n?=?61) and private sectors (n?=?85) were surveyed. Overall, results showed that the TPB model explained 94% and 71% of the variation in behavioral intent for public professionals and private professionals, respectively, with the remaining 6% and 29% relating to the other factors. Results for the public professionals showed that subjective norm and perceived behavioral control have a more important effect on adoption and that the effect of attitude was very small among professionals in private sector. Both groups selected the information services model as an appropriate in agricultural electronic marketing for local farmers so that agricultural services firms can offer only information services of farmers’ products without a direct role in buying and selling. Based on the results, it is recommended that to accelerate the adoption of e-marketing, its user-friendliness and advantages should be demonstrated to users via different platforms such as video presentations and workshops. In addition, the technology should be made available to potential users, and they should be encouraged and motivated to use it to ensure efficiency in the processing of transactions.     

Information Access and Smallholder Farmers’ Market Participation in Peru

Previous studies have documented the effect of information and communications technology (ICT) on farmers’ market participation. We employ a triple‐hurdle model to examine the effect of internet and phones on Peruvian smallholder farmers’ market participation, marketplace choice, and volume decisions using household‐level data from the IV National Agricultural Census of Peru in 2012. Double matching at the district‐ and household‐levels is implemented to address potential selection bias. Results indicate a positive direct effect of internet and phones on farmers’ market participation and volume decisions on the national market. Those with ICT access are more likely to sell on the foreign market than those without ICT access. The marginal effects suggest that internet access tends to have larger impacts on volume decisions than phones. In addition to direct effects, we find that internet access has significant and positive spillover effects on market participation and volume decisions in the national market. Without implementing matching procedures, the magnitude of the ICT effect tends to be smaller. Results provide empirical support for policies and social programmes that promote ICT especially internet usage in rural Peru to improve smallholder farmers’ marketing performance.     

Understanding the adoption of climate change adaptation strategies among smallholder farmers: Evidence from land reform beneficiaries in South Africa

Climatic change has a negative impact on people’s livelihoods, agriculture, freshwater supply and other natural resources that are important for human survival. Therefore, understanding how rural smallholder farmers perceive climate change, climate variability, and factors that influence their choices would facilitate a better understanding of how these farmers adapt to the negative impacts of climate change. A Zero-inflated double hurdle model was employed to estimate the factors influencing farmers’ adoption of adaptation strategies and intensity of adoption at the household level in South Africa. Different socioeconomic factors such as gender, age, and experience in crop farming, institutional factors like access to extension services, and access to climate change information significantly influenced the adoption of climate change adaptation strategies among beneficiaries of land reform in South Africa. Concerning intensity of adoption, age, educational level, farming experience, on-farm training, off-farm income, access to information through ICT and locational variables are the significant determinants of intensity of adaptation strategies. Thus, education attainment, non-farm employment, farming experience are significant incentives to enhance smallholder farmers' adaptive capacity through the adoption of many adaptation approaches. This study therefore concluded that farm-level policy efforts that aim to improve rural development should focus on farmers’ education, on-farm demonstration and non-farm employment opportunities that seek to engage the farmers, particularly during the off-cropping season. The income from non-farm employment can be plough-back into farm operations such as the adoption of soil and water conservation, use of improved planting varieties, insurance, among others to mitigate climate variability and subsequently increase productivity. Policies and investment strategies of the government should be geared towards supporting education, providing on-farm demonstration trainings, and disseminating information about climate change adaptation strategies, particularly for smallholder farmers in the country. Thus, the government, stakeholders, and donor agencies must provide capacity-building innovations around the agricultural extension system and education on climate change using information and communication technologies.     

基层农技服务供给模式的变迁与小农的技术获取困境

在农业转型的背景下,小农户存在修正既有生产方式和获取日常性生产指导的技术刚需.但基层农技服务供给却呈现了“行政上移与市场主导”的双重特征.农业部门不再建设基层服务力量,县级提供的公益性技术服务以回应国家农业政策导向为核心,而彻底偏离了农民的生产技术需求.以技术为辅助性销售手段的农资经销体系成为了乡村社会的技术主导.这种...     

ICT and agricultural productivity: evidence from cross-country data

This article carries out agricultural production function estimations, based on data for the period 1995–2000 on 81 countries, to present empirical evidence on the relationship between the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) and agricultural productivity. It is found that new ICT has a significantly positive impact on agricultural productivity. The evidence suggests that the adoption of modern industrial inputs in agricultural production relies on the information and communication infrastructure. However, the empirical evidence from this study also suggests that new ICT could be a factor for the divergence between countries in terms of overall agricultural productivity. Not only do we find that the ICT adoption levels of the richer countries are much higher than those of the poorer countries, but also that returns from ICT in agricultural production of the richer countries are about two times higher than those of the poorer countries. A plausible explanation for the poorer countries' relatively low productivity elasticity of ICT is the lack of important complementary factors, such as a substantial base of human capital.     

农业信息社会化服务结构性失衡的影响因素分析

随着中国国内市场经济的发展,农业愈来愈迫切需要市场信息的扶持.文章以新疆10个县28个乡为调查研究区域,使用二元logistic模型从户主特征、家庭特征、地区经济发展水平和其他特征研究影响农业信息服务内容供求结构性失衡的因素.研究表明:不同经济发展水平的地区信息内容失衡程度差异显著,经济发展水平越高,对降低农户所需要的农产品价格、供求方面的信息失衡有显著影响;汉族、年龄大、受教育程度高和家庭社会关系越多,对降低信息服务内容失衡有显著影响;手机、联网电脑等新兴媒介对降低农户信息服务失衡无显著影响,而传统媒介电视仍在农户搜集信息方面起到重要作用,但作用有限,合作社和农民信息协会在失衡影响因素中表现并不显著,这表明现有信息服务体系仍不健全,政府应根据农户特殊需求建立有效的信息服务平台,并提供更加完善的服务.通过分析发现:政府需要在欠发达和不发达地区加大信息供给强度,引导信息服务市场化;完善农户信息需求表达机制,针对农户的需要提供真实有效的信息;丰富服务方式,完善手机、电视、网络等平台为农户提供信息;完善农村信息供给渠道,增强合作社、农民信息协会提供信息服务的功能等建议.     

Revisiting constraints to smallholder participation in high-value markets: A best-worst scaling approach

We show how policymakers in developing regions can generate richer insights from using the choice experiment method best-worst scaling (BWS) method when ranking policy priorities on an importance scale. More specifically, we adopt BWS to provide an update on constraints that limit the participation of Kenyan horticultural smallholder farmers in modern agricultural value chains. In addition to traditional constraints posed by input market failures and missing institutions, we considered constraints such as trust and familiarity with buyers shown by recent empirical studies to inform smallholders’ market choices. Ascertaining the relevance of these constraints highlights our contribution to the existing literature. We find that farmers consistently rate access to high-quality inputs as their main constraint followed by concerns about access to credit, the high cost of meeting food standards, missing cooperatives, and exploitative intermediaries. Respondents considered insufficient labor, small farmlands, and weak tenure rights as the least important constraints. Age, location, gender, household income, and education influence the relative importance various segments of smallholders place on these constraints. For example, constraints are economic rather than personal for low-income farmers. Counterintuitively, rural smallholders are less likely to perceive poor transportation network as a constraint. Smallholders’ distrust of buyers they interact with is informed by their location and income. In designing intervention initiatives, policies that focus on segments of smallholders are needed for improving smallholder participation in modern agricultural value chains.     

劳动力价格、信息不对称与农户精细管理技术投入——基于质量识别能力差异的视角

近年来,劳动力价格的快速上涨已然成为中国农业生产所必须面对的内在挑战。对于机械作业难度相对较大的劳动密集型作物而言,在缓解劳动力约束瓶颈的同时,更应通过精细化的果园管理,以提高产品质量,进而提高其市场价格。然而,由于农产品具有典型的经验品属性,在信息不对称的外部约束下,农户通常难以获得应有的"质量溢价"。基于此,本文通过构建理论分析框架,以果品质量关键环节的精细管理技术作为研究对象,系统分析在劳动力价格上涨背景下农户精细管理技术投入的决策机制,以及在不同农产品质量识别程度中,劳动力成本变化对其影响的异质性,并基于全国18个省份农户的调研数据进行实证研究。研究结果表明:农户交易对象质量识别能力的提高,能够缓解农户与购买者之间存在的信息不对称性,将农产品质量信息传递给购买者,使农户获得更高的销售价格,进而在有效提高农户精细管理技术投入水平的同时,能够弱化劳动力价格对其所产生的负面影响。     

Will digital technologies transform agriculture in developing countries?

Mobile phones and the internet have significantly affected practically all sectors of the economy and agriculture is no exception. Building on a recent World Bank flagship report, this article introduces a concise framework for describing the main benefits from new information and communication technologies. They promote greater inclusion in the broader economy, raise efficiency by complementing other production factors, and foster innovation by dramatically reducing transaction costs. The article reviews the recent literature on corresponding technology impacts in the rural sector in developing countries. Digital technologies overcome information problems that hinder market access for many small‐scale farmers, increase knowledge through new ways of providing extension services, and they provide novel ways for improving agricultural supply chain management. While there are many promising examples of positive impacts on rural livelihoods—or “digital dividends”—these have often not scaled up to the extent expected. The main reason is that technology can always only address some, but not all of the barriers faced by farmers in poorer countries.     

The impact of grain self‐sufficiency regime on regional welfare and agricultural productivity in China

The nineties’ agricultural reforms in China that were aimed at deregulating the agricultural market eventually resulted in a huge drop in agricultural production and a high rate of inflation in agricultural input prices; this apparently motivated the government to introduce the grain self‐sufficiency regime in 1998. We examine how and to what extent this reform affected the productivity and welfare of grain farmers in China at the regional level. We find that the price regulations that destroyed the incentive to exert more effort adversely affected the growth in agricultural productivity but contributed to the growth in farmers’ welfare. Although the price regulations resulted in short‐term improvement in welfare across all the regions, in the long run such regulations can potentially result in larger drop in agricultural production because of its negative impact on the incentives to produce more.     

小农户参与农业全产业链的选择偏好及其异质性来源——基于选择实验法的分析

小农户参与农业全产业链是"实现小农户和现代农业发展有机衔接"的有效途径。本文基于山东省339户小农户的入户调查数据,采用选择实验法,建立混合Logit模型分析了小农户参与农业全产业链的选择偏好和偏好异质性来源。研究结果表明:相对于与龙头企业合作,小农户更愿意通过加入农民专业合作社参与农业全产业链,而且稳定紧密的利益联结机制、提供生产技术和市场信息服务及补贴政策会显著提高小农户的参与效用。研究也表明:小农户参与农业全产业链的选择偏好存在异质性,异质性偏好主要来源于小农户的兼业程度、家庭年纯收入和收入在村中所处水平三个因素。小农户兼业程度越低、年纯收入越低、收入在村中所处水平越低,越偏好参与农业全产业链经营。     

Four decades of China’s agricultural extension reform and its impact on agents’ time allocation

The Chinese Government has initiated a series of agricultural reforms since the 1970s to encourage agents to provide more services to farmers. In 2006, a new round of agricultural reforms was extended nationwide; however, the effectiveness of these reforms has not been examined. Based on a comparison of survey data sets before and after the reforms, we found that overall they significantly increased the time agents spend on agricultural extension services, although their effectiveness differs among three major components of the reforms. While the financial assurance reform had little impact on agents’ time allocation, the administrative reform actually reduced the time allocation to agricultural extension. However, we found strong evidence that the ‘three rights’ management reform (comprising the rights of personnel, financial and asset management) successfully increased agents’ time allocation to agricultural extension services. We also found that institutional incentives and the Government’s investment did not increase the time agents spent on agricultural extension. The lack of incentives is a problem that needs to be addressed in future reforms. We found that professional agents spent more time providing extension services than their non‐professional counterparts. We suggest that local Governments should avoid recruiting non‐professional agents into agricultural extension stations.     

农地禀赋、行为能力对农户经营收入的影响

基于广东省部分农户的问卷调查数据,采用有序多分类Logistic模型,实证分析农户农地禀赋、处置能力、交易能力对其农业经营收入的影响,结果显示,农户所在村庄地形地势、承包耕地的面积、肥力与交通条件、农户家庭务农人数、参加农业培训次数、技术服务满意度、雇工人数与农机设备价值、农户家庭在村级事务中发挥作用程度、运销加工服务能力等对其经营收入有显著正向影响;农户承包耕地的块数对其经营收入有显著负向影响;而农户耕地灌溉条件、农户间相互帮助、农资购买服务、农业生产服务以及农户是否加入合作组织对其经营收入的影响未能通过显著性检验。为此,要增加农户经营收入,应建立健全农地流转机制,推进农地有序流转,引导农户实现适度规模经营;同时,要继续加大对农业基础设施的投入力度,不断提高农业技术服务水平,增强农产品加工能力,并持续强化农业中介服务能力。     

农业社会化服务能促进农户采用亲环境农业技术吗

使用亲环境农业技术是治理农业面源污染、改善耕地质量和提升农业绿色发展程度的重要举措.本文基于农业社会化服务视角,采用农户微观调查数据,利用倾向得分匹配法和mvprobit方法,定量测度了农户购买不同环节的农业社会化服务对其亲环境农业技术采用的影响效应.研究结果表明,农户购买农业社会化服务对其采用亲环境农业技术具有显著促...     

Agri‐environmental Instruments for an Integrated Rural Policy: An Economic Analysis

The new Rural Development Regulation of the EU reflects the shift of attention within rural areas from agricultural production towards rural development and embraces both farmers and non‐farm residents. While agricultural production is required to comply with environmental standards, rural areas also have to fulfil the growing demand for landscape, outdoor recreation and wildlife conservation. This paper develops a model of a rural area where farmers and non‐farm residents live together. A central government uses a combination of two‐policy instruments ‐ direct compensation payments and public services ‐ aimed at encouraging farmers to adopt environmentally beneficial practices and at the same time to increase the provision of countryside amenities and the sustained vitality of the rural area. The optimal mix of the policy instruments is evaluated under various governmental objectives. The analysis suggests that a combination of direct payments to farmers with the supply of local public services is a promising tool for rural policy development initiatives in the EU.     

Derivatives for Development? Small‐Farmer Vulnerability and the Financialization of Climate Risk Management

While agricultural production has always been a risky endeavour, it has become even more so in the current context of climatic change and increasing market uncertainty. Meanwhile, the rollback of state protections has rendered small‐scale farmers, especially marginalized peasant producers in the Global South, particularly vulnerable to these contemporary stressors. This essay critically evaluates the contemporary roll‐out of financial derivatives that purportedly aim to mitigate smallholder vulnerability. It gives particular attention to a novel type of derivative known as index‐based agricultural insurance (IBAI) that plays an increasingly prominent role in initiatives to ‘climate proof’ agriculture. The creation of IBAI markets has required significant work, including (1) technical interventions to debundle environmental risk from agricultural production and rebundle it in novel ways that support private financial capital and agricultural input suppliers, (2) extensive state support in the creation of risk markets, and (3) the construction of an accommodating ‘insurance culture’ among small‐scale producers. In addition to mitigating weather‐based risk, a primary objective of IBAI is to spur agricultural modernization. In promoting this agenda, IBAI initiatives may have the paradoxical effect of exposing smallholders to new risks while expanding their overall vulnerability to environmental and economic stressors.     

“互联网+农业产业链”金融创新模式运行分析——以大北农生猪产业链为例

本文以大北农生猪产业链为例,在分析"互联网+农业产业链"金融模式运行机制的基础上,探究农业产业链金融创新模式缓解农户融资难、融资贵的机理。通过分析发现,"互联网+农业产业链"金融模式通过云计算、大数据等信息化手段建立数字信用体系,并利用大数据有效控制农业生产风险和市场风险,为农户提供低成本、无抵押、快速便捷的信贷资金,有效解决农户融资难问题。同时,该模式为产业链上各经营主体提供贷款、结算、理财、保险等金融服务,提高了整个产业链的资金使用效率。此外,在"互联网+农业产业链"金融模式下,小农户能与产业链上的其他主体处于同等市场地位,契合"去中心化"的思路,实现小农户和现代农业发展的有机衔接。     

Analyzing the deviation between farmers' Land transfer intention and behavior in China's impoverished mountainous Area: A Logistic-ISM model approach

China’s land transfer is an inevitable requirement for implementing the rural revitalization strategy in the new era. The speed and extent of land transfer are related to the sustainable development of China's agriculture and the process of realizing rural agricultural modernization. In practice, due to the imperfect land transfer market and related systems, the property income of the transfer farmers is insufficient, which leads to inconsistency between the intention and behavior of the farmers. Based on a field survey of rural households in Gansu Province's impoverished mountainous area, we first employ cross-analysis to qualitatively assess the deviation between farmers' land transfer intention and behavior. Second, we use a logistic-interpretative-structural model to empirically analyze the factors influencing such a deviation and the internal logical relationships of these factors. We find that a substantial deviation exists between farmers' land transfer intention and behavior, with 57.64 % of respondents having the intention to transfer, but no actual transfer behavior. Moreover, among the 12 factors identified that significantly affect this deviation, agricultural production enthusiasm is superficially the main direct factor, while agricultural production scale, non-agricultural income, satisfaction in agricultural subsidy policy, and the impact of disasters are the secondary, indirect factors. Meanwhile, the deep-rooted factors are the head of household's age, the presence of village cadres in the household, non-farm working hours, the size of the household's labor force, and difficulty in obtaining land transfer information, land types, and property rights intervention. Therefore, we conclude that in the process of land transfer, the leading role of village cadres should be strengthened, a transfer information exchange platform should be established, land policy should be strictly implemented, land adjustment should be reduced, the rural land exit guarantee mechanism should be improved, and the doubts of farmers regarding land transfer should be eliminated. These steps would make sure that the deviation between farmers’ land transfer intention and actual behavior is minimized.     

乡村内生型农机服务市场形成机理及其运行机制研究

大国小农是我国的基本农情.未来相当一段时间,小规模兼业农户仍将是我国农业经营的主要微观主体.内生型农机服务市场能够有效连接小农户与农机服务提供者,有助于解决因土地细碎化而产生的高交易成本问题,为此,本文重点揭示了内生型农机服务市场的形成机理,设计了其运行机制.研究发现,小农户分散且多元的农机服务需求是内生型农机服务市场...