Abstract
The bulk of the previous work on how to improve smallholder farmer welfare inSub-Saharan Africa has mainly focused on improving these households' access to yieldaugmentingagricultural technologies. There has been very little commensurate effortdone to improve the same households' access to ICT-based market information on thecontinent. In this chapter we show the need to improve access to ICT-based marketinformation and the welfare implications. Data were collected in 2007 from five districtsin Uganda, namely Luwero, Busia, Tororo, Iganga, and Mukono which are among themajor producers of maize, groundnuts and beans. A total of 400 farm households wererandomly selected and interviewed. We considered only the maize, beans and groundnutenterprises and used propensity score matching techniques to determine the impact ofadopting ICT-based market information on farm-gate prices received by smallholderfarmers. The results from the Epanechnikov Kernel matching algorithm show thatfarmers who adopted ICT-based market information consistently received higher farmgateprices than those who only used market information given to them by traders andbrokers. The difference in the maize, beans and groundnut prices received between thoseusing ICT-based market information and those using information from traders isstatistically significant. The average increment obtained in the farm-gate price of maize,beans, and groundnuts due to adopting ICT-based market information is US$33.89,US$60.56, and US$107.00 per metric ton, respectively, in 2007. One implication fromthese results is that to improve farmer welfare, the promotion of adoption of yieldaugmentingagricultural technologies should be coupled with the promotion of improved access to ICT-based market information. This should effectively raise farm incomes ofsmallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is more to gain from this dualapproach than focusing only on the promotion of yield-augmenting agriculturaltechnologies, as is the case in many development programs in Africa.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | Information and Communications Technology |
Subtitle of host publication | New Research |
Publisher | Nova Science Publishers, Inc. |
Pages | 105-122 |
Number of pages | 18 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781626180703 |
State | Published - Apr 1 2013 |
Keywords
- Beans
- Farm-gate prices
- Groundnuts
- ICT-based market information
- Impact evaluation
- Maize
- Propensity score matching