Farmers' Perceptions on agricultural technical service and its determinants in Colombia: A case study of fedearroz service in ibague province

Colombian agricultural industry which contributes to the current country's GDP is expected to take benefit from the TYade Promotion Agreement (TPA) that will eliminate tariffs and other barriers to trade in goods and services between The United States and Colombia. Furthermore, a synergy needs to be built by the Colombian government and agricultural sector to protect the interest of Colombian farmers from the negative impact of the TPA. In relation to it, this study tries to fill the gap by evaluating the farmers' perception on the effectiveness of Fedearroz, one of the agro-chains of the Ministry of Agriculture that act as representative of producers aimed at defending and representing rice farmers nationwide. The farmers' perception on quality of service was assessed by Likert scale to derive reliable insight into a phenomenon in certain situation. The analysis result shows that fanners perceived the input price, variety development, rice price behavior and credit requirement as the most satisfying services among those provided by Fedearroz. In addition, determinant factors influencing farmers' perception on Fedearroz's services is evaluated using probit model. The empirical result mainly revealed several factors that tend to increase the probability of satisfaction to Fedearroz service, which mainly includes farmers' productive age, role of technical assistant to choose fertilizer and soil analysis for fertilization parameter.