FOREIGN MARKET PROMOTION PROGRAMS: AN ANALYSIS OF PROMOTION RESPONSE FOR APPLES, POULTRY AND TOBACCO

U.S. exports of apples, poultry, and unmanufactured tobacco were analyzed using regression techniques to determine their responsiveness to foreign market development expenditures. It was determined that apple and tobacco exports were responsive, while poultry exports were not. Marginal returns to an additional dollar of export promotion for apples and tobacco were $60 and$31, respectively. Results indicated that response to poultry promotion was not different from zero. This is likely due to aggregation of data which does not permit isolating impacts of specific promotional efforts

Insecticide use impacts of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Farmer Field Schools: Evidence from onion farmers in the Philippines

This article empirically examines the impact of Farmer Field Schools (FFS) on insecticide use by onion farmers in the Philippines. FFS is an intensive Integrated Pest Management (IPM) information dissemination method that encourages producers to lower their reliance on chemical insecticides for controlling pests and diseases in their farms. These FFS-IPM trainings have been conducted within vegetable-based production systems in the Philippines. The data used in the study are from a 2009 face-to-face farm-level survey of 200 onion growers in Nueva Ecija province. Using instrumental variable (IV) procedures to control for endogeneity and selection problems in the data, we find that FFS-trained onion farmers in the Philippines have significantly lower insecticide expenditures (~PhP5,000) than non-FFS trained control farmers. When econometric problems due to endogeneity and selection are not controlled for, the FFS training did not show any statistically significant effect on insecticide use. The insecticide reducing effect of FFS has important environmental and health implications, and provides evidence about the effectiveness of the FFS training method in disseminating important IPM concepts in the country.Farmer Field Schools Insecticide use impact Instrumental variables technique Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Onion production