The Effects of Agricultural Extension on Farm Yields in Kenya.

The paper examines effects of agricultural extension on crop yields in Kenya controlling for other determinants of yields, notably the schooling of farmers and agro-ecological characteristics of arable land. The data we use were collected by the Government of Kenya in 1982 and 1990, but the estimation results reported in the paper are based primarily on the 1982 data set. The sample used for estimation contains information about crop production, agricultural extension workers (exogenously supplied to farms), educational attainment of farmers, usage of farm inputs, among others. A quantile regression technique was used to investigate productivity effects of agricultural extension and other farm inputs over the entire conditional distribution of farm yield residuals.