Rural extension and technical efficiency in the Brazilian agricultural sector

In this paper, we identify the effect of rural extension on the productive performance of Brazilian agricultural establishments, using technical efficiency as a measure of farm performance. The data used is drawn from the microdata of the 2006 Agricultural Census, accessed directly from the IBGE secrecy room. For this, we use an approach that combines the stochastic production frontier, considering selection bias in the adoption of rural extension (Heckman’s approach) and entropy balancing. We find that rural extension increases efficiency in the use of the productive inputs, with more technical efficiency found among adopting producers than non-adopters. When considering the differences according to farm size, an even greater effect is observed for larger producers. In addition, public rural extension generates higher technical efficiency scores than those obtained by privately-operated establishments.