Designing capacity development activities of small-scale farmers in developing countries based on discrete choice experiments

A generally accepted approach to support and increase small-scale farmers living standards in developing countries is to improve their management capacities by means of agricultural training. In this respect, capacity development is the most efficient and used method to train farmers. However, there is a lack of quantitative information about farmers preferences of those activities, which are crucial to refine capacity development activities in the future. This study employs a discrete choice experiment analysing the willingness to pay to determine the preferences of small-scale farmers for agricultural training with respect to the training method, trainer, duration, location and additional offers. The main finding is that most important for farmers are training methods including demonstration. Furthermore, farmers would like to receive additional offers during the training and would like to be trained by an trainer with an academic background. Farmers are also willing to pay for these types of training. The outcomes could provide relevant politicians and other stakeholders the opportunity to improve their training programmes and, in the end, make capacity development more efficient. Acknowledgement :