Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Abstract/Artist Statement
The welfare of rural households depends upon income from agricultural production. The adoption of new agricultural practices can improve farmer welfare by increasing yield and/or lowering production costs. But farmers do not always adopt beneficial new practices. Barriers include uncertainty about effectiveness, high up-front costs, or lack of information about the new practices. I will examine whether the use of social media for information influences pasture management practices among cattle farmers in Rondônia, Brazil. Rondônia is on the edge of the Amazon region. The state is heavily deforested for use as farmland. Farms in this state predominantly raise cattle for dairy and beef production, relying heavily on pastures for feed. Traditional pasture management in Rondônia entails extensive grazing that degrades the soil over time. Farmers address degraded pasture through periodic, costly, input-intensive interventions to restore pasture health, or deforestation for new land. Sustainable practices exist which reduce degradation and household production costs. Existing literature on adoption of agricultural practices widely explores the influence of risk, credit access, and access to information from agricultural extension or neighbors. Farmers tend to trust information from other farmers most, as they have the kind of practical experience that farmers care about. The use of social media connects farmers to a greater variety of other farmers than before. Such a connection provides more access to information and at a much lower cost than typical avenues like agricultural extension.
Social media use increases the potential to learn about and adopt new agricultural practices, but few researchers have investigated to what extent it causes farmers to actually change their agricultural decisions. If any correlation exists, it may suffer from selection bias. Farmers who tend to adopt all kinds of new technologies or who prefer novelty may be more likely to use both social media and new pasture practices. I will estimate the effect of information from social media on the adoption of pasture management practices using regression with covariates, propensity score matching, and an endogenous switching regression. Results will be compared across each estimation method, as well as between farmers who use traditional and sustainable management practices. Increased adoption of pasture practices would provide evidence in favor of using social media to spread information about other agricultural practices and in other countries. Data comes from the Connections between Water and Rural Production project, which surveyed farm households in Rondônia on a variety of agricultural topics. This dataset contains 1385 households who responded to questions on pasture management and social media use.
Adoption of Pasture Management Practices in Rondônia, Brazil: The Influence of Information from Social Media
UC 331
The welfare of rural households depends upon income from agricultural production. The adoption of new agricultural practices can improve farmer welfare by increasing yield and/or lowering production costs. But farmers do not always adopt beneficial new practices. Barriers include uncertainty about effectiveness, high up-front costs, or lack of information about the new practices. I will examine whether the use of social media for information influences pasture management practices among cattle farmers in Rondônia, Brazil. Rondônia is on the edge of the Amazon region. The state is heavily deforested for use as farmland. Farms in this state predominantly raise cattle for dairy and beef production, relying heavily on pastures for feed. Traditional pasture management in Rondônia entails extensive grazing that degrades the soil over time. Farmers address degraded pasture through periodic, costly, input-intensive interventions to restore pasture health, or deforestation for new land. Sustainable practices exist which reduce degradation and household production costs. Existing literature on adoption of agricultural practices widely explores the influence of risk, credit access, and access to information from agricultural extension or neighbors. Farmers tend to trust information from other farmers most, as they have the kind of practical experience that farmers care about. The use of social media connects farmers to a greater variety of other farmers than before. Such a connection provides more access to information and at a much lower cost than typical avenues like agricultural extension.
Social media use increases the potential to learn about and adopt new agricultural practices, but few researchers have investigated to what extent it causes farmers to actually change their agricultural decisions. If any correlation exists, it may suffer from selection bias. Farmers who tend to adopt all kinds of new technologies or who prefer novelty may be more likely to use both social media and new pasture practices. I will estimate the effect of information from social media on the adoption of pasture management practices using regression with covariates, propensity score matching, and an endogenous switching regression. Results will be compared across each estimation method, as well as between farmers who use traditional and sustainable management practices. Increased adoption of pasture practices would provide evidence in favor of using social media to spread information about other agricultural practices and in other countries. Data comes from the Connections between Water and Rural Production project, which surveyed farm households in Rondônia on a variety of agricultural topics. This dataset contains 1385 households who responded to questions on pasture management and social media use.