From agronomic data to farmer recommendations: an economics training manual

This manual presents a set of procedures for the economic analysis of on-farm experiments. It is intended for use by agricultural scientists as they develop recommendations for farmers from agronomic data. Developing recommendations that fit farmers' goals and situations is not necessarily difficult, but it is certainly easy to make poor recommendations by ignoring factors that are important to the farmer. Some of these factors may not be very evident. A recommendation is information that farmers can use to improve the productivity of their resources. A good recommendation can be thought of as the practices which farmers would follow, given their current resources, if they had all the information available to the researchers. Farmers may be able to use a recommendation directly, as in the case of a particular variety. Or they may adjust it somewhat to their own conditions and needs, as in the case of a fertilizer level or storage technique. The agronomic data upon which the recommendations are based must be relevant to the farmers' own agroecological conditions, and the evaluation of those data must be consistent with the farmers' goals and socioeconomic circumstances.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT)
Format: Handbook biblioteca
Language:English
Published: CIMMYT 1988
Subjects:AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES AND BIOTECHNOLOGY, ECONOMIC ANALYSIS, STATISTICAL METHODS, FARMING SYSTEMS, DATA ANALYSIS,
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10883/3842
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Summary:This manual presents a set of procedures for the economic analysis of on-farm experiments. It is intended for use by agricultural scientists as they develop recommendations for farmers from agronomic data. Developing recommendations that fit farmers' goals and situations is not necessarily difficult, but it is certainly easy to make poor recommendations by ignoring factors that are important to the farmer. Some of these factors may not be very evident. A recommendation is information that farmers can use to improve the productivity of their resources. A good recommendation can be thought of as the practices which farmers would follow, given their current resources, if they had all the information available to the researchers. Farmers may be able to use a recommendation directly, as in the case of a particular variety. Or they may adjust it somewhat to their own conditions and needs, as in the case of a fertilizer level or storage technique. The agronomic data upon which the recommendations are based must be relevant to the farmers' own agroecological conditions, and the evaluation of those data must be consistent with the farmers' goals and socioeconomic circumstances.