New experiments in agriculture

Abstract

Until about two decades ago, experimentation in agriculture was primarily focused on crop trials at research stations and model farms. Studies in the field, involving actors along the value chain, tended to focus on cross-sectional data, or relied on panel data and the inclusion of control variables to tease out causal effects. More recently, however, the number of field studies involving experiments has exploded. The 2015 International Conference of Agricultural Economists devoted a lot of attention to experiments, and several keynote speakers noted that an experimental revolution is under way in agricultural, development and natural resource economics. Throughout the (developing) world, experiments are now being used, both as a measurement tool to assess preferences and behaviour and as a method to separate cause and effect