Heterogeneous quality of agricultural commercial inputs and learning through experimentation

This proposal aims to answer three research questions regarding small holder technology adoption of great interest to our partners and to the policy makers aiming for higher agricultural productivity in Africa. First is the heterogeneous and hidden quality of inputs a barrier to technology adoption? If so, this would lead to the recommendation of interventions that guide the farmers toward the right inputs, through regulations or through the diffusion of information. Second, do estimates regarding returns to new technologies coming from agricultural research in on-farm trials provide biased estimates for the response to inputs in real life conditions? If so, what are the most important sources of such bias, and how can trials be designed to avoid them? The study hence aims to reinforce the bridge between agronomic and development economics work. Third, does learning-by-doing and learning-from-others regarding new agricultural technologies differ depending on soils, skills and gender? And does this heterogeneity provide useful lessons for the design of more inclusive extension models and on the role of own experimentation in such models?

To answer these questions we propose two Randomized Control Trials (RCT). The first "research trial RCT" will allow the farmers in the randomly selected villages to participate to the on-farm trials carried out by the agronomists of IITA in order to test inputs of different quality. Second, in the "technology dissemination RCT" village based advisors will be trained in randomly selected villages to promote the best inputs identified in the research trials. For each RCT we will collect several rounds of panel data to study the dynamic adoption processes. This will be complemented with information from soils sample and with detailed information on farmers' cognitive, non-cognitive and technical skills. The study has been jointly designed with IITA scientists during a series of meetings and field trips, drawing on the expertise of agronomists and economists. A specific objective of the collaboration between PSE and IITA is capacity building for IITA social scientists in rigorous impact evaluation methods, through hands-on collaboration in all the different steps of the research.

The research will provide guidelines on how to address the issue of heterogeneous input quality to our partners at IITA, and more broadly to policy makers and stakeholders interested agricultural productivity in Africa. It will also aim to provide guidelines for future research by scientists within and beyond the CGIAR, and provide key insights to economists and other social sciences studying the puzzle of low adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa. We will therefore actively engage with different stakeholders throughout the project, and aim to publish the results in high quality peer reviewed academic journals.

This proposal addresses a number of key issues highlighted under the call for proposals' Theme 1 "Agriculture and Growth". It is also of relevance to Theme 3 "Innovation and productivity growth in Low -Income Countries".

This research project addresses various questions of key relevance to policy makers and practitioners focused on agricultural productivity and agricultural research in Sub Sahara Africa. To reach it's policy potential, an important part of the project will involve engagement with, feedback from, and result dissemination to various policy stakeholders. Policy impact is sought at different levels, from our partners at IITA and the specific context of the Compro II input regulation and dissemination practices and IITA's farmer managed trial practices; to other community-based extension and farmer managed trials in Kenya and elsewhere in Sub Sahara Africa; to the broader international debate on input quality, extension and the profitability of agronomical research.

This research will show whether heterogeneous input quality constitutes a major barrier to technology adoption, and doing so provide strong causal evidence regarding the potential impact of related policies. Policy makers can improve quality controls and regulatory mechanisms. They can also support technology dissemination activities, to provide information on the quality of the inputs to the farmers at the local level. Understanding the extent to which the presence of low quality inputs in the market potentially limits farmers experimentation and therefore might hamper adoption of high quality ones can provide a powerful additional rational for such policies. The research has the potential to directly influence regulation and information dissemination activities under IITA's Compro II project, which aims to reach 420,000 households in 6 participating countries with information about input quality.

The study will also shed light on farmers' learning from their own experimentation and from behavioral marketing. An excessive role of marketing over the farmer's learning would highlight the risk of pushing farmers toward technologies that are not profitable in their conditions. Understanding to what extent own experimentation can potentially overcome heterogeneity of skill levels and soil conditions and enable male and female farmers to learn about returns to technologies that are relevant for them, will have direct implications for the potential returns to extension approaches that rely on such experimentation. Given the popularity of such approaches, and the widely recognized need for rigorous causal evidence on cost-effective and inclusive extension models this will be directly relevant for the wide community of extension practitioners and policy makers in Africa.

Finally strengthening the bridge between research in agronomy and in development economics will tell us whether the data of on-farm trials can be used to estimate the returns of existing technologies when disseminated among farmers. It will lead to specific guidelines on how to adjust the designs of agronomical trials to limit some of the potential important biases, and provide strong causal evidence to support those ideas. This in turn has the potential to significantly increase the lessons that can be learned from future agronomical trials, and can contribute to the evaluation of the large-scale impact of CGIAR and other agronomic research. It will also contribute to a better decision making on which technologies to be promoted and how to allocate funds between agronomic research and dissemination efforts.

The answers to the 3 research questions are hence expected to lead to some very clear policy implications, relevant for a wide set of actors. We consider dissemination of these results a key part of this proposal and expect to do so both in a number of high quality peer reviewed publications and in a clear set of policy guidelines that will be widely disseminated through a variety of mechanisms, such as stakeholder meetings, policy conference and workshop presentations, websites, policy briefs and outreach publications (see pathways to impact appendix).