Extension and management pathways for enhanced farm sustainability: evidence from Irish dairy farms

This article examines pathways among farmers' extension participation, the uptake of recommended farm management practices and economic and environmental sustainability. We explore the 'win-win', efficiency-based focus of the Irish hybrid extension programme using an unbalanced panel dataset of dairy farms from 2010 to 2019. We apply two-way fixed effects regression models and sensitivity analyses to ensure the robustness of our results to effect heterogeneity and omitted variable bias. Our findings reveal that extension participation has a limited association with the adoption of recommended practices. These practices might be associated with economic benefits, while their environmental effects are not evident. Additionally, extension participation is not found to have a direct association with sustainability outcomes. These findings have important implications for extension programmes that focus on economic and environmental outcomes.

Automated summary

This study examines the relationship between farmers' extension participation, the adoption of recommended farm management practices, and economic and environmental sustainability. Using an unbalanced panel dataset of dairy farms from 2010 to 2019, we analyze the efficiency-based Irish hybrid extension program. Our findings suggest that extension participation has a limited association with the adoption of recommended practices and does not directly contribute to sustainability outcomes. These results have important implications for extension programs focusing on economic and environmental outcomes.