The Role of Education on Agricultural Productivity in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Rural area is a geographic area located outside cities and towns. In order to have a long term sustainability in rural sector, education plays a major role by empowering farmers with right direction, right thinking patterns, right decision making ability and right choices. Hence the education would be a sustainable strategy to uplift the rural sector with agricultural development. However in order to enhance the productivity of the rural sector, the role of education is crucial. The pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits of the education have impacts on farmers for their shorter and long-term pricing efficiency, scale efficiency, allocative efficiency and technical efficiency to increase the agricultural productivity. The objective of the study is to examine the relationship of education with the productivity's sample of 409 families were taken and semi structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. As a data analytical tool, Structural equation method was used with the support of SPSS AMOS (Version 21). However study concludes that the household with no schooling has an inverse relationship with the productivity while the educational level of primary level and secondary level have a positive influence on the Total Factor Productivity of farming and Total Factor Productivity of non-farming. In addition to that the study indicates that the extension services, social capital and other informal and non-formal education streams also influence on agricultural productivity positively.