The role of information provision on public GAP standard adoption

Throughout Southeast Asia, government agencies are promoting good agricultural practices (GAP) standards for improving food safety, avoiding potential nontariff barriers to exports, and ultimately securing farmers' health and revenues. This paper presents an analysis of the adoption of a public standard in Thailand, the Rice Q-GAP where Q stands for “quality.” In the Central Plains of Thailand, a major rice production area, rice is produced by relatively small farms but with very intensive use of chemical inputs, making it challenging to promote production standards. Our study investigates the factors influencing the adoption of standards and the differences in cultivation practices between adopters and nonadopters. Governmental agencies have organized training activities throughout the country about rice production and Q-GAP standards. That training is likely to have an important influence on Q-GAP adoption. We investigate the potential selection bias in training delivery, using a recursive bivariate probit model whereby training is successively an explanatory variable for the Q-GAP adoption and a variable to be explained. Our model suggests that lack of labor availability is an essential factor related to nonadoption. Belonging to farmers associations and groups is also shown to be an important factor of adoption. Unexpectedly, training has a slight negative effect on Q-GAP adoption. A possible explanation is that when concrete information about the program is delivered, some farmers make an informed decision not to participate; this reinforces the idea that the main factors that could hamper further adoption are not related to information but to real farm constraints and farmers' rational behavior. The paper also found some small but significant differences in terms of farmers' practices related to adoption. The most convincing change is the reduction in the number of pesticide applications by adopters. (Résumé d'auteur)