The Impact of Strengthening Agricultural Extension Services : Evidence from Ethiopia
This paper evaluates the effect of the Rural Capacity Building Project, which aimed at promoting growth by strengthening the agricultural service systems in Ethiopia and by making them more responsive to smallholders' needs. The project intend...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/874841503060841531/The-impact-of-strengthening-agricultural-extension-services-evidence-from-Ethiopia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27976 |
| Summary: | This paper evaluates the effect of the
Rural Capacity Building Project, which aimed at promoting
growth by strengthening the agricultural service systems in
Ethiopia and by making them more responsive to
smallholders' needs. The project intended to increase
the outreach of agricultural extension services to help
farmers become aware of and adopt economically viable and
environmentally sustainable technologies and practices. The
paper examines the impact of the Rural Capacity Building
Project using panel data on 1,485 geographically dispersed
households in project and control kebeles. The results show
that the strengthening of extension services had a positive
impact on economic participation in the household, land area
cultivated, and adoption of marketable crops, suggesting
that access to extension helped farmers switch to more
commercial, market-oriented agriculture. In addition, and
contrary to previous evidence from other countries,
female-headed households seem to have benefited equally from
the project. However, the project was not able to reduce the
preexisting gender gap in agricultural outcomes. |
|---|