Beyond the field: Impact of Farmer Field Schools on food security and poverty alleviation

TY - UNPB

T1 - Beyond the field

T2 - Impact of Farmer Field Schools on food security and poverty alleviation

AU - Lilleør, Helene Bie

AU - Larsen, Anna Folke

PY - 2013

Y1 - 2013

N2 - In this paper, we estimate the impact of a farmer field school intervention among small scale farmers in Northers Tanzania. Unlike previous farmer field school evaluations, we go beyond the immediate agricultural impact and estimate the impact of farmer field school participation in the pre-specified development objects, namely poverty alleviation and food security among participating households. We wxploit the implementation design of a gradual project roll-out to establish a quasi-experimental difference-in-difference setup, which can account for potential selection info the project, both at village and household level, despite the lack of baseline data. we find strong positive effects on measures of food security, but we find no effect on the poverty indicators. We investigate possible mechanisms for this and conclude that both reallocation of labor ressources and improved production smoothing among participation households may, in part, lead to this finding.

AB - In this paper, we estimate the impact of a farmer field school intervention among small scale farmers in Northers Tanzania. Unlike previous farmer field school evaluations, we go beyond the immediate agricultural impact and estimate the impact of farmer field school participation in the pre-specified development objects, namely poverty alleviation and food security among participating households. We wxploit the implementation design of a gradual project roll-out to establish a quasi-experimental difference-in-difference setup, which can account for potential selection info the project, both at village and household level, despite the lack of baseline data. we find strong positive effects on measures of food security, but we find no effect on the poverty indicators. We investigate possible mechanisms for this and conclude that both reallocation of labor ressources and improved production smoothing among participation households may, in part, lead to this finding.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - impact accessment

KW - farmer field schools

KW - quasi difference-in-difference

KW - food security

KW - poverty

KW - gradual roll-out

KW - Tanzania

KW - Africa

M3 - Working paper

T3 - Rockwool Working Paper

BT - Beyond the field

PB - Rockwool Foundation

CY - Copenhagen

ER -