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Impact of an Agricultural Development Project on Technology Adoption and Crop Yields of Resource Poor Farmers in Bangladesh*

M A Jabbar
Ex-consultant of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)

A T M Ziauddin
Ex-Team Leader of the International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya;

M Z Abedin
Professor, Department of Farm Power and Machinery, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh; and IRRI Representative in Bangladesh.

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

An agricultural development project targeted to resource poor households disseminated a wide range of crop, livestock, fisheries, agro-processing and non-farm technologies to enhance their yield, income and food security. In this paper, impact of the project on acquisition of knowledge and adoption of the promoted technologies are measured as these are critical intermediate steps to achieve increased yield, income and food security. A combination of project and control, and before intervention and after intervention was used to assess impact of the project activities. It appeared that for technologies which were more vigorously promoted through knowledge dissemination and input supply, both incidence of knowledge and adoption increased significantly in the project areas, and in some cases net change in adoption was more than in knowledge acquisition perhaps because previously people knew certain technologies but did not practice them due to some constraints which were removed by the project activities. Net change in the yield of several crops was 8-21% in the project areas. The findings indicate that even when technologies are scale neutral, poor and marginal farmers may not be aware about them and may not adopt them or adopt inadequately due to lack of knowledge and access to inputs and services. Therefore, much social gains can be derived by designing and implementing extension, information dissemination and input supply programmes targeted to such households so that they may have access to better knowledge, technology and inputs to make best use of their meagre land, labour and capital resources to improve productivity and income and improve food security.

Keywords: Project impact, Knowledge, Adoption, Technology, Crop, Livestock, Fisheries, Agroprocessing, Bangladesh

Location:

Start Date:

End Date:

Program Area: Socio-economic and Policy

Non-commodity: Adoption of technology, Income generation

Objectives:

• Acquisition of knowledge and adoption of technologies • Changes in yield of crops, • Changes in farm and non-farm income, food consumption and nutritional status • Changes in physical and social capital.

Methodology:

Project design The project was designed to address problems of households that were food insecure. The project recognized two widely used definitions of food security as below: Food security is defined as the ”access by all people at all times to enough food needed for an active and healthy life. Its essential elements are the availability of food and the ability to acquire it” (Reutlinger, 1985). “Food security exists when all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (World Food Summit, 1996). In defining pathways to food security, the project took cognisance of the European Commission’s food security strategy in Bangladesh which is to contribute to the eradication of mal- and under-nutrition of the poor, especially the hard core poor households. This project did not include absolutely landless among the hard core poor as they were covered by other initiatives. The operational definition of the target population was “farm households who are self-sufficient in rice for three to eight months per year and own les then 0.6 hectare of land” (EC, 2002; Orr, 2002). The implementing INGOs used a set of objective criteria or indicators e.g. land size and family size, land ownership and tenancy status, women as family head, wage labour along with farm activities, etc to identify and induct participants in the project (IRRI, 2007). A baseline survey among a sample of 1090 project participants and a similar number of non-participants in control areas revealed that average cultivable land ownership per household of the target population was respectively 0.37 and 0.36 acre. A small percentage of households owned more than 1.5 acres of land but they actually owned small amount of land per capita, and some were inducted as resource farmers for dissemination of project deliverables. The participants received 2-3 years of active project support according to project design (2 years for Action Aid and Practical Action and 3 for CARE) followed by less intensive support for another one or two years. It was assumed that target households would depend on own production of rice as well as on the market for sale (even if deficit) and purchase. The deficit months would almost certainly coincide with higher market prices and these months could be further affected by sudden shocks such as floods or droughts. So the degree of market dependence would influence food security status. It was hypothesized that food security of the target households could be achieved through (a) increased food availability by increased production of cereal and non-cereal crops, (b) increased access to food from enhanced farm and non-farm income and (c) further changed socio-economic and political environment such as practice of the sharecropping law and increase tenant’s share in output, and it was hypothesized that a more diversified diet and a more equitable intra-household distribution of food consumption might also contribute to improved food security. Among these elements, the most important and the common attribute of the projects implemented by the three INGOs was improvement of the productivity of the small land resources (owned or shared in) of the target households through adoption of improved technologies. The project interventions or deliveries could be grouped into two main categories: • Promotion of a range of agricultural technologies or technology components among participant households for adoption by creating awareness and imparting knowledge and skills through training and extension • Promotion of a range of organizational and institutional innovations to facilitate technology delivery and adoption, and access to inputs and services, and marketing of products. In this paper, only the impacts of technology interventions or deliveries have been assessed. More details on organizational and institutional innovations and their impacts may be found in Jabbar et al. (2010). The types of agricultural technologies or technology components promoted depended on local ecology and farmers’ needs and capacities. These included, among others, the following: • Fertilizer related technologies • Seeds and seedlings related technologies • Compost and green manure related technologies • Insect & pest control related technologies • Irrigation and water management related technologies • Home gardening and vegetable production related technologies • Cropping system related innovations • Livestock and poultry production and management related technologies • Fish culture, production and management related technologies • Agro-processing activities e.g. making value adding products like chutney and tomato sauce, fruit juice, yoghurt, powdered spices • Non-farm activities the impact pathway involved identification of the technologies suitable for resource poor households, making farmers aware about the available options and facilitate access to technologies by providing extension, credit, input supply services, leading to adoption and increased yield and income. The objective of this paper is to assess if the project intervention made any difference in terms of acquisition of knowledge about new technologies and their adoption by the target households.

Source of Information: Bangladesh J. Agric. Econs. XXXIV, 1&2 (2011) 55-75

Article Link (Online Journal):

Funding Source:

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Total Budget (Tk.) :

Achievement/Findings:

The findings of this study indicate that even when technologies are scale neutral, poor and marginal farmers may not be aware about them and may not adopt them or adopt adequately due to lack of knowledge and access to inputs and services. Therefore, much social gains can be derived by designing and implementing extension, information dissemination and input supply programmes targeted to such households so that they may have access to better knowledge, technology and inputs to make best use of their meagre land, labour and capital resources to improve productivity and income and improve food security. Such programmes should have a long menu of technologies, innovations and activities suitable for poor households, so that people can choose what suits them most Public sector extension has played a key role in the past in the success achieved in food production and in various sub-sectors of agriculture. However, public sector extension had and still has limited capacity to reach the entire farming population with their services. The findings of this study suggest that public sector extension may play a role in enhancing the capacity of NGOs, especially smaller local NGOs to perform complementary role in knowledge and information dissemination to small and marginal households. Further, innovative farmers and framer leaders may also be trained to serve as informal extension agents to link with formal service providers. Small scale or resource base is a major handicap for acquisition of inputs and services and marketing of products as it involves high transaction costs. Collective efforts – whether in the form of cooperatives or some other kind of group organization- can overcome such problems. Although cooperatives have earned bad name due to its misuse and mismanagement, the findings of this study indicate that self organised collective efforts are useful and necessary to tackle the problems of poor households to get them out of poverty. Public and NGO investment in creating awareness about the benefits of collective action and capacity to self organise rather than imposing any pre-designed organisational form may have high pay off in helping poor get out of poverty.

Knowledge Management: Journal