Measuring the impact of an intensive commodity price risk management education program on agricultural producers

Abstract

The purposes of the study were to measure change in knowledge, adoption of practices, and economic impact, and to investigate relationships between selected personal and business parameters, and satisfaction, knowledge, adoption of practices, and economic impact of the Master Marketer program and marketing clubs. A census was attempted to collect data from the 520 Master Marketer graduates and 1,058 marketing club members. Using recommendations from Dillman (2000), data from participants were collected using two mail questionnaires. This process yielded 326 usable responses from Master Marketer graduates for a return rate of 62.7%, and 407 usable responses from marketing club members for a response rate of 38.4%. Master Marketer respondents had a statistically significant increase in selfperceived knowledge with a change in mean score of 2.06 (pre-knowledge mean = 3.33, post-knowledge mean = 5.40, where 1 = low, and 7 = excellent). Using a paired samples t-test, the 2-tail level of significance was beyond the .05 level of significance. Marketing club respondents also showed a statistically significant increase in self-perceived knowledge. Adoption of price risk management practices was measured with an adjusted response scale ranging from 0 to 12. Master Marketer respondents showed a pre-mean score of 3.15, a post-mean score of 6.61, and a change of 3.46. The 2-tailed level of significance for the overall adoption scale was less than 0.01. Marketing club respondents also showed a statistically significant increase in adoption of these practices. Economic impact in terms of change in net income was derived using respondents?? self-reported changes in commodity price received for each commodity produced, and each respondent??s typical level of production. The total farm impact had a mean of $32,288. The 2-tailed level of significance for the total farm impact was less than 0.01. The mean impact per farm of $12,361 for marketing club respondents was also statistically significant. For Master Marketer respondents, notable findings with respect to the correlation of independent variable with dependent variables was total gross revenue was negatively correlated with knowledge change. Participants who reported a large change in knowledge tended to also report a large change (increase) in time spent on marketing.