The impact of farmer field schools on the adoption of climate adaptation measures (AgrImpact)

The evaluation aims to test the effectiveness of farmer field schools in teaching farmers agroecological practices and facilitating their adaptation to climate change. The training program enrolls farmers who reside within a treatment area, have stated their interest in joining the program, and have sufficiently large production systems in the target value chains of pepper, cloves, honey, coffee, and vanilla.

2024-02-15

2024-11-29

Adaptation practice adoption scores

The training aims to teach farmers how to adapt their agriculture with practices that benefit both harvests and the environment. To assess take-up, we count the number of practices adopted and the land size on which these are implemented.

Adaptation practice knowledge scores.
Household and individual food security
Household income

The training aims to teach farmers how to adapt their agriculture to practices that benefit both harvests and the environment. A short knowledge test will be used to assess knowledge transfer.

Some of the taught practices should directly impact farmers’ food security. Food security will be measured on an individual level using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES/FAO) and on the household level using the World Food Program’s Food Consumption Score Module.

Though the full effect of the promoted FFS activities will not take place within the evaluation period, adopted practices may lead to a reallocation of labor within the household and, therefore, affect income in the short term.

This randomized control trial (RCT) will compare the impact of Farmer Field School (FFS) to a control condition with no intervention. After listing and screening by the implementing partner, the research team will then make a randomised allocation to the treatment or control condition as well as select a sample for inclusion in the survey component. The survey treatment and control sub-samples will be balanced between arms on gender.
The sampling lists for the survey will then be sent to the survey team for a field survey without disclosure of the treatment allocation. During the field survey, farmers will be consented with recorded verbal or written documentation. At the end of the field survey in each area, lists of the farmers to be treated in each area will be sent to the implementation organization in order to begin intervention activities.

Not available

Random selection of the survey sample and random assignment to the treatment and intervention arms will be performed by site using random numbers generated in Stata.

Individual assignment

Yes

13 sites

960 farmers

Sample size by treatment arm will vary base on the number of eligible farmers identified by site, as areas with few farmers will have to have a smaller control group. At this time we estimate that there will be 538 farmers in the treatment group and 422 in the control group.

The trial is powered at 90% to detect a standardized effect size of 0.28 in the revenue derived from agriculture by FFS participants compared to controls, in line with the average effect reported in Waddington et al. (2014). This person-randomized, blocked trial will include 13 FFS sites. The sample will vary per site in line with the number of farmers who are able to be recruited, with a maximum of 80 survey participants per FFS.  The number of survey participants will be capped at 960 participants.  This includes 6% additional sample to account for survey attrition and loss of power caused by slightly unequal allocation to treatment arms. We assumed an alpha of 0.05, an effect size variability of 0.04, and covariates and the blocking variable each explaining 0.15 of the variability in the final model. This sample size is also sufficient to measure the larger effect sizes seen in number of improved agricultural techniques practiced (Waddington et al., 2014). Due to the randomization procedure, effects can be causally attributed to the treatment with FFS.