Estimating impact of technological adoption in farming in Bihar: a propensity score matching approach

Purpose - In the developing world, the adoption of new technology in agriculture has emerged as a tool to address the problem of investment-disincentive effect of capital investment on smallholders. In Indian agriculture, which is dominated by smallholders, technological adoption becomes very essential. In this regard, along with the government, local level organizations also provide training and other support to adopt the new agricultural technique. The present study is an attempt to assess the counterfactual impact of this sort of initiative in the context of Bihar, a state in India.Design/methodology/approach - The study uses field survey data which are collected from the Gaya district of Bihar. Overall, 249 sample farmers are surveyed from 23 villages of four blocks of the Gaya district. There are two groups of selected farmers: treatment and control groups. Farmers who adopted the new technique belong to the treatment group, and otherwise, the control group. For analytical purpose, a propensity score matching method has been used to estimate the counterfactual impact of the adoption of the new technique of farming on farmers' agricultural income.Findings - The study observes a significant improvement in the agricultural income of the farmers who adopted the new technique. New agricultural techniques, propagated through the local level organization, might be instrumental to enhance farmer's skill as well as income.