Abstract:
Abstract
Commercial farms investment plays important role in agricultural technology spillovers but less is known on
specific channels influencing neighboring farmer’s uptake of agricultural technologies. This study analyzed the
effect of farmer’s working in commercial farms on agricultural technologies uptake intensity. Multiphased study
design was used to randomly and proportionately to collect a sample of 1,203 farmers from three independent
samples in Karatu, Iringa and Njombe. Nearest neighbor matching estimator was used to estimate the effect of
working in commercial farms after testing for a balanced matching and control samples. In Karatu the intensity
of agricultural technology uptake of farmer worked in commercial farm was 0.28 larger but not statistically
significant. But if the farmer had not worked uptake intensity is reduced to 0.27 which was statistically
significant at 5% p-value. In Iringa the intensity of agricultural technology uptake to farmer working in
commercial farm on average is 0.45(P< 0.05) significantly large. In Njombe, on average agricultural uptake
intensity is 0.20 not statistically significant compared to uptake intensity of 0.23 which is statistically significant
at 5% p-value had he/she not worked in commercial farms. It implies in areas where commercial farm producing
different crops to neighboring farmers uptake of technologies is more on soil conservation than growing new
crop or seed varieties. But in areas without landscarcity and investor’s crop being similar to crops produced by
small-holder farmer, it was found farmers grow new crops or new seed varieties, use soil conservation practices,
tractor and ox-plough. It was concluded that commercial farms should be promoted while considering crops
produced by neighboring smallholder farms and land availability to farmers, if uptake of agricultural
technologies to neighboring farmers is the policy expectation.
Keywords: employment, commercial farms, uptake of agricultural technology, matching estimation
