Abstract

Modeling spatial spillover of agricultural knowledge among farmers
Track: Sustainable Development and Humanitarian Affairs
Authors: John Ulimwengu

In the literature, the issue of spatial spillover of agricultural knowledge has received less attention and the few studies that incorporate spatial spillover focus on innovation diffusion at national and international levels. Some studies have accounted for technology spillovers by considering not only the effects to producers, but also on non-adopting poor households. In this paper, we use farm level geo-referenced data and a spatial Bayesian probit model to estimate agricultural knowledge spillovers among 5000 Ugandan farmers. Preliminary results confirm the existence of significant and positive knowledge spillovers for each of the seven knowledge indicators considered, varying between 0.408 and 0.636. For example, on average, spillover accounts for 37.8%-58.3% of the total marginal effect of education expenses on agricultural knowledge. The upshot of our analysis for policy is that these spillovers must be accounted for in order to foster innovative agricultural research.