Assessing the impact of participatory extension programme membership on farm business performance in Northern Ireland.

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dc.contributor.authorAdenuga, Adewale
dc.contributor.authorJack, Claire G.
dc.contributor.authorAshfield, Austen
dc.contributor.authorWallace, Michael
dc.date.accessioned2021-10-21T13:21:30Z
dc.date.available2021-10-21T13:21:30Z
dc.date.issued2021-09-30
dc.descriptionPublication history: Accepted - 26 September 2021; Published online - 30 September 2021.en_US
dc.description.abstractThis paper evaluates the impact of membership of the Business Development Groups (BDG), a participatory extension programme in Northern Ireland on the economic performance of participating farmers for dairy and sheep enterprise groups. The study employs the conditional difference-in-differences approach which combines a non-parametric matching estimator with a difference-in-differences analytical technique to obtain a credible best-estimates of the causal effect of BDG membership on farmers’ economic performance assuming that BDG participation is as good as random after controlling for observable farm characteristics and that the parallel trends assumption holds between BDG participants and non-participants. The results of the analyses showed that membership in the BDG programme has a statistically significant impact on the economic performance of participating farmers. Specifically, the results showed that farmers who are members of the dairy and sheep BDGs increased their gross margin by £109.10 and £17.10 per head respectively compared to farmers that are non-members of the BDGs. The results of the study provide robust evidence to inform policy development around the area of participatory extension programmes. It also supports the design of efficient agricultural education and extension systems that incorporates the ideas of the farmers themselves through peer-to-peer learning thereby maximising the economic and social benefits accruable from such programmes.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipThis research was undertaken as part of the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Evidence and Innovation Programme (DAERA E&I 18/1/01)—Impact of RDP: Evaluation of the Rural Development Programme 2014–2020, Farm Business Improvement Scheme-Longitudinal Studyen_US
dc.identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12518/362
dc.identifier.citationAdenuga, A. H., Jack, C., Ashfield, A. and Wallace, M. (2021) ‘Assessing the Impact of Participatory Extension Programme Membership on Farm Business Performance in Northern Ireland’, Agriculture. MDPI AG. doi: 10.3390/agriculture11100949.en_US
dc.identifier.issn2077-0472
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11100949
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherMDPIen_US
dc.rightsCopyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).en_US
dc.subjectimpact assessmenten_US
dc.subjectparticipatory extensionen_US
dc.subjectconditional difference-in-differencesen_US
dc.subjectmatchingen_US
dc.subjectBusiness Development Groupsen_US
dc.subjectNorthern Irelanden_US
dc.titleAssessing the impact of participatory extension programme membership on farm business performance in Northern Ireland.en_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
dcterms.dateAccepted2021-09-26
dcterms.dateSubmitted2021-08-27

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