Qaim, Matin (author) and Fischer, Elisabeth (author)
Format:
Abstract
Publication Date:
2010-09-14
Published:
Kenya
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 178 Document Number: C30723
Notes:
Paper presented at Tropentag 2010, Conference on International Research on Food Security, Natural Resource Management and Rural Development, Zurich, Switzerland, September 14-16, 2010. 1 page.
Agricultural Economics (Amsterdam, Netherlands), GIS-derived measures of location and space have increasingly been used in models of land use and ecology. However, they have made few inroads into the literature on technology adoption in developing countries, which continues to rely mainly on survey-derived information. Location, with all its dimensions of market access, demographics and agro-climate, nevertheless remains key to understanding potential for technology use. The measures of location typically used in the adoption literature, such as locational dummy variables that proxy a range of locational factors, now appear relatively crude given the increased availability of more explicit GIS-derived measures. This paper attempts to demonstrate the usefulness of integrating GIS-measures into analysis of technology uptake, for better differentiating and understanding locational effects. A set of GIS-derived measures of market access and agro-climate are included in a standard household model of technology uptake, applied to smallholder dairy farms in Kenya, using a sample of 3330 geo-referenced farm households. The three technologies examined are keeping of dairy cattle, planting of specialised fodder, and use of concentrate feed. Logit estimations are conducted that significantly differentiate effects of individual household characteristics from those related to location. The predicted values of the locational variables are then used to make spatial predictions of technology potential. Comparisons are made with estimations based only on survey data, which demonstrate that while overall explanatory power may not improve with GIS-derived variables, the latter yield more practical interpretations, which is further demonstrated through predictions of technology uptake change with a shift in infrastructure policy. Although requiring large geo-referenced data sets and high resolution GIS layers, the methodology demonstrates the potential to better unravel the multiple effects of location on farmer decisions on technology and land use.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 179 Document Number: C36293
Notes:
Via Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, Washington, D.C. 1 page., Reports on a service enabling workers in urban areas to send money to their families in rural areas, using mobile phones.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 148 Document Number: C23737
Notes:
From Indo-Asian News Service via The Hoot, Media South Asia. 2 pages., "News stories in the media of developing nations often lack critical analysis of the issues at stake and rarely represent the farmer's view."
