This article reassesses the debate over the role of education in farm production in Bangladesh using a large dataset on rice producing households from 141 villages. Average and stochastic production frontier functions are estimated to ascertain the effect of education on productivity and efficiency. A full set of proxies for farm education stock variables are incorporated to investigate the ‘internal’ as well as ‘external’ returns to education. The external effect is investigated in the context of rural neighbourhoods. Our analysis reveals that in addition to raising rice productivity and boosting potential output, household education significantly reduces production inefficiencies. However, we are unable to find any evidence of the externality benefit of schooling – neighbour's education does not matter in farm production. We discuss the implication of these findings for rural education programmes in Bangladesh.

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Farm productivity and efficiency in rural Bangladesh: the role of education revisited

Evaluating the impact of agricultural extension on farms' performance in Crete: a nonneutral stochastic frontier approach

This paper aims to test this hypothesis and to contribute to better understanding of strategies to revitalize the agricultural extension system in Malawi. Specifically, it examines the interplay between the fertilizer subsidy and access to extension services, and their impact on farm productivity and food security in Malawi. Results show that the fertilizer subsidy has inconsistent impact on farm productivity and food security; at the same time, access to agricultural advice was consistently insignificant in explaining farm productivity and food security. Further analysis, however, shows that when access to extension services is unpacked to include indicators of usefulness and farmers’ satisfaction, these indicators were statistically significant. Households who reported that they received very useful agricultural advice had greater productivity and greater food security than those who reported receiving advice that they considered not useful. This result implies the need to ensure the provision of relevant and useful agricultural advice to increase the likelihood of achieving agricultural development outcomes.

/pdf/the-impact-of-agricultural-extension-services-in-the-context-5dwvqxiy6q.pdf

The Impact of Agricultural Extension Services in the Context of a Heavily Subsidized Input System: The Case of Malawi

While the majority of micro studies finds that rural education increases agricultural productivity, various recent cross‐country regressions analysing the determinants of agricultural productivity were only able to detect insignificant or even surprising negative effects of schooling. In this paper, we argue and show that this failure to find a positive impact of education in the international context is rather a data problem related to the use of enrolment and literacy indicators. Using a panel of 95 developing and middle‐income countries from 1961 to 2002 together with the newest version of the Barro‐Lee educational attainment dataset, we show that education indeed has a highly significant, positive effect on agricultural productivity which is robust to changes in the control variables and in the econometric methods applied. Distinguishing between different levels of education further reveals that only primary and secondary schooling have significant positive impacts while tertiary education remains insignificant. Finally, the effect of education is estimated separately for countries with different income levels. Results indicate that the coefficient of the education variable remains insignificant for countries from the poorest three income quintiles, while it is positive and highly significant for the richest two quintiles. This finding can be interpreted as support for the prominent argument claiming that education leads to higher agricultural productivity only in the presence of rapid technical change where education will help farmers to adjust more readily to the new opportunities.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/57305/1/675949491.pdf

Revisiting the Role of Education for Agricultural Productivity

This paper analyzes the effects of education on farm productivity in the case of growers of modern and traditional varieties of paddy in Odisha, Eastern India. Using an endogenous switching regression model, the study has found that a minimum threshold level of education is significantly influencing the adoption of modern varieties of paddy and thereby the farm productivity of adopters only. So, the study finds the evidence in support of Schultz hypothesis that says education enhances farm productivity in the case of adopters of modern technology. The study suggests that farmers’ field school program must be implemented along with a strong extension network in the study region for a wider dissemination modern technology.

/pdf/impact-of-farmer-education-on-farm-productivity-under-vcr3w5c3d0.pdf

Impact of farmer education on farm productivity under varying technologies: case of paddy growers in India

The stochastic production frontier approach is used to study the effects of education on agricultural efficiency for a cross-section of 'early-stage' farms from Guanghan County, Sichuan Province, China. Education for farm families in rural China is multifaceted with a combination of formal education, intragenerational transfer of knowledge within the home, and agricultural extension services. Since our survey data span two different years with markedly different policy environments, we are able to examine not only which aspects of education affect agricultural efficiency, but also whether or not the policy environment matters. We find limited evidence that in a policy environment that is conducive to agriculture, formal education provides positive returns in agriculture. Furthermore, general education may provide greater returns than the more targeted extension services.

Honghai Deng

Papers

The effects of education in early-stage agriculture: some evidence from China