105. Artisan at the Scientific Poster Session at Expo

At SCA Expo New Orleans Ruth Ann shared results from research on cooperatives in Rwanda. The research was published in the 2019 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Food Security, vol. 11, July 2019, 967 979. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-019-00952-9

Guests view Ruth Ann's poster at Expo.

The research questions were:

1.Does cooperative membership increase adoption of best practices and coffee productivity?

2.Do cooperatives improve farm household welfare?

Results included:

Estimates of average treatment effects on the treated (ATT) from the nearest neighbor propensity score matching method (PSM) estimator suggests that cooperative membership significantly improves outcomes. Our results in Tables 5 show that cooperative members, compared to farmers who are not coop members:

1.Have higher adoption of best practices (.49 index points higher)

2.Have 20% higher productivity(KG cherry/tree)

3.Received 18% more coffee income per tree than non-members.

4.Obtain 10% more income from coffee than non-members, as a percentage of total income

5.Lower cost of production by 24%.