Agricultural stakeholder panels and lead farmer visits: Evidence from Malawi

Agricultural extension is critical to economic transformation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Yet, local extension services remain weak, despite several decades of international aid aimed at improving extension services in the region. Agricultural Stakeholder Panels (ASPs) are a demand-side extension approach designed to improve rural extension services by enhancing farmer interaction with local extension agents. In Malawi, the ASP approach has been in rural communities as part of the national extension policy for more than two decades. Yet, most ASPs were either completely dysfunctional, partially operational, or somewhat ineffective in reaching their clientele communities. Thus, in 2015, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) funded the Strengthening Agricultural and Nutrition Extension (SANE) program to support the government of Malawi in implementing ASPs more carefully and rigorously, and thereby improve agricultural extension services in the country. However, empirical evidence of the impacts of functional ASPs in terms of improving extension services remains unexplored. We respond to this gap by estimating the impacts of the ASP approach on agricultural extension services using lead farmer visits as a proxy. We apply an endogenous treatment effect regression to original survey data from a sample of 2134 households across 22 districts in Malawi. We found positive and statistically significant impacts of functional ASPs on lead farmer visits in 2018: Farmers associated with such ASPs received eight extension visits from lead farmers compared to other farmers per year, a significant result with crucial implications for improving extension services in Malawi. The result implies that effective ASPs can improve the performance of extension agents, and thereby demonstrates the importance of such policies in improving agricultural extension systems in Malawi, similar contexts elsewhere in SSA, and beyond.