From agronomic data to farmer recommendations: an economics training manual

Abstract

This document is a completely revised version of the CIMMYT Economics Program manual, From Agronomic Data to Farmer Recommendations: An Economics Training Manual, written by Richard Perrin, Donald Winkelmann, Edgardo Moscardi, and Jock Anderson. Since its publication in 1976 that manual has been through six printings and has been translated into six languages. The manual has been used by countless students and researchers for learning a straightforward method of analyzing the results of on-farm agronomic experiments and making farmer recommendations. We approach the revision of such a successful manual with considerable caution. Our work over the past decade has given us a chance to present this material, in the classroom and in the field, to agricultural researchers in a wide variety of settings all over the world. This experience has led us to propose and test some new ways of explaining and presenting key concepts. We gradually began to consider the possibility of incorporating some of those ideas in a revised manual. One of the first steps in the process was to introduce a set of exercises for classroom teaching, developed by Larry Harrington. Later, Robert Tripp and Gustavo Sain developed further exercises and methods of presentation which they tested in training courses. Tripp and Sain wrote the first draft of the present document and guided its review by the entire staff of the CIMMYT Economics Program. Just as this revised manual has built on the experience of hundreds of researchers with the original version, we hope that those who use this new version will provide suggestions for its improvement. We believe it will be useful in the classroom as well as for individual study and reference. A book of exercises has been developed to accompany this manual and can be obtained from CIMMYT. We hope that the new version of the manual will find an acceptance as wide as that of its predecessor.