Does Microfinancing improve Farm Productivity? Empirical Evidence on Rice farming in San Francisco, Agusan del Sur, Philippines

Gianne Francis Alfred E. Manzano, Adela G. Ellson, Adonis Traje, Glory Dee A. Romo and Jon Marx P. Sarmiento

No 291326, 2011 ASAE 7th International Conference, October 13-15, Hanoi, Vietnam from Asian Society of Agricultural Economists (ASAE)

Abstract: Poverty remains to be the highest in agricultural areas in the Philippines. To alleviate this problem, capital empowerment through microfinancing was among the government’s program in the rural areas including the municipality of San Francisco, Agusan del Sur. A total of 95 rice farmers with a 10% margin of error were interviewed to draw conclusions on the impact of microfinancing to farm productivity. Econometric modeling was employed. The production data were fitted using five standard production functions namely; (1) neoclassical, (2) neoclassical with interaction, (3) Cobb-Douglas like, (4) Transcendental and the (5) modified transcendental models. Transcendental function best fits the data with Microfinancing significantly improving farm productivity by 39%. Despite this positive impact, only 34% of these farmers were availing from formal institutions and only 18% took advantage during the last cropping. Nonetheless, it is highly recommended to strengthen the microfinance program in the Philippines by offering extension works on the benefit of Microfinancing, offering less stringent application procedure, and ensuring agricultural credits are used on its purpose, thus, improving the plight of the rural farmers.

Keywords: Crop Production/Industries; Farm Management; Productivity Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23
Date: 2011-10-13
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/291326/files/u ... ento_Philippines.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:asae11:291326

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.291326

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2011 ASAE 7th International Conference, October 13-15, Hanoi, Vietnam from Asian Society of Agricultural Economists (ASAE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().