This has led to an increased interest in alternative farming systems such as organic farming, which is commonly perceived as more sustainable. Despite many initiatives to promote organic farming, it remains a marginal activity in many countries. Widespread uptake of organic farming requires a better understanding of the drivers for and barriers to its adoption. In this paper, the authors focus on the role of information provision and training as one driver for the adoption of organic farming practices in Indonesia. They use a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to identify the impact of a three-day hands-on training in organic farming on smallholder farmers’ adoption and knowledge of such practices as well as on their perception towards organic farming. They find that the training intervention had a positive and statistically significant effect on the use of organic inputs. They further find positive and statistically significant treatment effects with respect to knowledge about and perception of organic farming.Overall, their findings suggest that intense training is a promising instrument to increase the uptake of organic farming.
The paper is part of the BMBF-funded project 'IndORGANIC'.
Full reference: Grimm, M. & Luck, N. (2020), Can training enhance adoption, knowledge and perception of organic farming practices? Evidence from a randomized experiment in Indonesia. IZA Discussion Paper No. 13400, IZA Bonn.