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Risk Management Information Sources Preferred by Women and Limited Resource Farmers in Alabama

Duncan M. Chembezi

Summary

In managing agricultural risk, many agencies and organizations offer a range of different strategies such as crop insurance, futures, options, or forward contracts to farmers. However, the adoption of these and other risk management tools by women and limited resource farmers has generally been slow. Most previous studies suggest that the slow adoption is related to lack of knowledge and understanding about them. In a survey of field crop producers in Indiana, Nebraska, Texas and Mississippi, Coble and others found that less than 34 percent of the producers had attended any risk management training programs. Similarly, a survey of African-American farmers in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas by the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in 2000 found that less than 44 percent of the producers had received such training. And less than 5 percent of those receiving training were women. The low participation rate was attributed primarily to the fact that many agencies and land-grant universities did not give adequate technical assistance to farmers on crop insurance and other risk management tools. None of these studies has, however, looked at sources of information used by women and limited resource farmers as they employ these strategies. This study is an attempt to fill this void and assess risk management information sources preferences by women and limited resource farmers in Alabama. The sources were categorized as: risk management experts, printed material, computer-based or Internet, associations, radio/television, books, and face-to-face interaction. The results are based on a survey of 288 women and limited resource agricultural producers in Alabama. All the respondents were asked to rank sources of information using a Likert-type scale (1 for ‘not useful’ to 5 for ‘very useful’).

Details

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