Impact of Best Practice Hub (BPH) on vegetable production among youth farmers in Tanzania
Date
2019
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is experiencing an increase in the use of synthetic pesticide in a manner that escalates concerns over rising economic, public health, and environmental costs. Promotion of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) through Best Practice Hubs (BPHs) is hypothesized to encourage farmers to use synthetic pesticide more judiciously along with non-chemical pest management practices such as pest resistant seeds, crop rotation, soil improvement, field hygiene, mulching etc. Vegetable farmers are expected to reduce the quantity of pesticide used, reduce pesticide expenditures, boost profits and reduce farmers’ vulnerability to health risks. To test these hypotheses, this study analyzes the impact of a BPH training program on the reduction of pesticide expenditures, increase in vegetable profits, and reduction of health risks using cross-sectional data collected from 441 youth vegetable farmers; 81 direct trained participants, 170 indirectly trained participants, and 190 control farmers in Tanzania. Propensity score matching models are employed to analyze the impact of BPH training on pesticide use, yield, profits and farmers’ health risks. Two matching procedures – kernel matching (KM) and one-to-one nearest neighbor matching (NNM) – are used to control for biases resulting from observables which could render results unreliable. Results suggest that direct trained farmers significantly reduced expenditures on synthetic pesticide, increased vegetable yield, vegetable profit, and had reduced vulnerability to health risks. Estimates of the average treatment effect indicate that synthetic pesticide expenditures were reduced by 51%, vegetable profits increased by 72%, and vulnerability to health risks reduced by 35%. No significant impact is found for indirect training done by trained farmers. This means that indirect training through farmer-to-farmer interaction or learning through observation have little impact despite its widespread use in scaling improved technologies in most of the programs targeting smallholder farmers. Therefore, this study recommends promotion of direct training of farmers in training programs rather than indirect training when enough financial resources are available. Future research is needed to explore the best approach to improve indirect training outcomes. ☐ Keywords: Best Practice Hub, integrated pest management, propensity score matching synthetic pesticide, Tanzania