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.

This randomized control trial (RCT) will compare the impact of Farmer Field School (FFS) to a control condition with no intervention. At each FFS site, the implementing partner will enroll as many participants as possible up to a total of 200 farmers. After screening these lists to remove farmers who are not eligible for inclusion in the FFS, the lists are sent to the research team as soon as they are available.
The research team will then allocate to the treatment or control condition and select a sample for inclusion in the survey component. At each site, 100 farmers will be assigned to the intervention, with the remainder assigned to the control. As the implementer has committed to the funding body to have at least 30% of participants be women, the research team will increase the proportion of women in the treatment sample by up to 5% in cases where the number of women listed is less than 55%.
For areas where less than an ideal number of farmers were eligible, both the sample size for the survey and the proportion of women added will be adjusted. In areas where there is no control list or less than 105 farmers in the total list, the FFS site will be cut from the evaluation. If the total list numbers between 105-110, 55 farmers will be surveyed, if there are 111-120 farmers 65 farmers will be sampled, if there are 21-30 farmers, 75 farmers will be surveyed, and if there are 31+ the 80 farmers as planned will be included. In all sites, the survey sample will first be taken from the group randomly assigned to the control condition and thereafter from the treatment group. This will result in unequal allocation between groups, with more farmers sampled in the treatment allocation in areas where fewer farmers have signed up. In all cases, the survey treatment and survey control sub-samples will be balanced between arms on gender.
After finalizing the numbers of farmers of each gender to be assigned to each condition (treatment surveyed, control surveyed, treatment not surveyed, control not surveyed) for each site, individual farmers will be assigned to each condition using random numbers.
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 included only after informed consent is given, and the result of this process will be documented with a verbal record or digital signature. In the field, farmers assigned to the survey condition will be excluded for reasons such as more than one farmer resident in the same household and farmers residing beyond the FFS catchment area. [Reasons for exclusion may be added over the course of the survey as new situations are discovered.] These excluded farmers will not be replaced in the study.
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. At this time, the intervention organization may find other farmers who are not eligible for the intervention that were not identified by the survey team. These intervention farmers will be replaced by non-survey control farmers in the same areas, if available, or in other areas if not available in the same area. In any case, the intervention will need to have a total of 1300 farmers enrolled in the treatment to meet their contractual obligations.

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.