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Determinants of Agricultural Technology adoption: the case of improved groundnut varieties in Malawi

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Relation http://oar.icrisat.org/5060/
 
Title Determinants of Agricultural Technology adoption: the case of improved groundnut varieties in Malawi
 
Creator Simtowe, F
Asfaw, S
Diagne, A
Shiferaw, B A
 
Subject Groundnut
 
Description This paper applies the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) framework on data obtained from a
random cross-section sample of 594 farmers in Malawi to document the actual and potential
adoption rates of improved groundnut varieties and their determinants conditional on farmers’
awareness of the technology. The fact that not all farmers are exposed to the new technologies
makes it difficult to obtain consistent estimates of population adoption rates and their
determinants using direct sample estimates and classical adoption models such as probit or tobit.
Our approach tries to control for exposure and selection bias in assessing the adoption rate of
technology and its determinants. Results indicate that only 26% of the sampled farmers grew at
least one of the improved groundnut varieties. The potential adoption rate of improved
groundnut for the population is estimated at 37% and the adoption gap resulting from the
incomplete exposure of the population to the improved groundnut is 12%. We further find that
the awareness of improved varieties is mainly influenced by information access variables, while
adoption is largely influenced by economic constraints. The findings are indicative of the
relatively large unmet demand for improved groundnut varieties suggesting that there is scope
for increasing the adoption rate of improved groundnut varieties in Malawi once the farmers are
made aware of the technologies and if other constraints such as lack of access to credit are
addressed.
 
Date 2010
 
Type Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
Rights —
 
Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/5060/1/Groundnut_adoption_Malawi.pdf
Simtowe, F and Asfaw, S and Diagne, A and Shiferaw, B A (2010) Determinants of Agricultural Technology adoption: the case of improved groundnut varieties in Malawi. In: 48th Agricultural Economists Association of South Africa, September 19-23, 2010, Cape Town, South Africa.