Agricultural Credit and Extension Services: Does Their Synergy Augment Farmers’ Economic Outcomes?

Access to credit is essential for sustainable agricultural development. This paper evaluates the impact of formal and informal agricultural credit, access to extension services, and different combinations of agricultural credit and extension services on the economic outcomes of farming households in...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2021-04, Vol.13 (7), p.3758
Main Authors: Moahid, Masaood, Khan, Ghulam Dastgir, Yoshida, Yuichiro, Joshi, Niraj Prakash, Maharjan, Keshav Lall
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural credit
Agricultural development
Agricultural lending
Agricultural production
Agriculture
Cost control
Developing countries
Farmers
Farming
Farms
Financial institutions
Households
LDCs
Livestock
Microfinance
Productivity
Revenue
Rural areas
Statistical analysis
Sustainable agriculture
Sustainable development
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Access to credit is essential for sustainable agricultural development. This paper evaluates the impact of formal and informal agricultural credit, access to extension services, and different combinations of agricultural credit and extension services on the economic outcomes of farming households in Afghanistan. This study applies a quasi-experimental approach (propensity score matching) and inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) analysis. The data comes from a survey of 277 randomly selected farming households in the three districts of rural Afghanistan. The results show that having access to formal agricultural credit has a positive and differentiated impact on the farming costs and net revenue of farming households. However, the effects increase when a farming household has access to both formal credit and extension services. The results also reveal that credit constraints affect farming costs and net revenue. The study provides some practical implications for agricultural development policymakers. First, formal agricultural credit affects farm revenue in rural Afghanistan. Second, the impact of credit bundled with agricultural extension services on farm revenue is higher than the impact of the provision of each service separately. Therefore, a more sustainable agricultural credit arrangement should be supplemented by extension services for farmers in Afghanistan.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su13073758