The effect of participation in the Ugandan National Agricultural Advisory Services on willingness to pay for extension services

Uganda’s National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS), established in 2001, is a demand-driven extension program for developing farmer organizations and improving farmer production and welfare. The program is expected to be 50% client funded after 25 years. However, varying returns to extension services and inconclusive evidence about their effectiveness suggest that farmers may not be willing to pay for these services. Using a choice experiment, this study found that longer participation in NAADS increased farmers’ willingness to pay and that NAADS had a cost beneficial effect at farm level. The findings suggest that farmers are willing to pay for extension advice (US$0.20, which is higher than that found for most other African extension systems) if they see they are given good information, though they should not be asked to pay the full cost. Longer association with NAADS promoted the adoption of new crops, reduced the vulnerability of farms by increasing technology adoption and improved farmer welfare

Quantifying individual feeding variability: implications for mollusc feeding experiments

1. In order to quantify the level of variability in seedling consumption displayed by individual molluscs, we placed one snail (Helix aspersa) in each of 51 trays containing (7-day-old) Taraxacum officinale seedlings for 7 days. 2. Initially, individual snails displayed considerable variability in their consumption of seedlings; however, this variability declined with time. The consumption of seedlings was not related to individual snail mass. 3. A second grazing experiment, using five different snail densities in similar experimental conditions to the first, showed that increasing snail number reduced variability within treatment groups. 4. A computer simulation, based on data from the first experiment correctly predicted the basic form of the decline in feeding variability with increasing snail density found in the second. Post hoc changes to the model, based on empirical analysis of the second experiment to account for mutual interference, reduced discrepancies between empirical and model results. 5. This study highlights the consequences that individual feeding behaviour has on feeding trials with molluscs, and provides a simple method by which this variability can be quantified and accommodated within experimental design