Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Matching new agricultural technology with the demand for innovation of low-income farmers

Small-scale farmers are often slow to adopt seemingly profitable new agricultural technologies even though these innovations are crucial for farm productivity growth and economic development. This research project addresses this question and identifies ways to improve the efficacy of agricultural research and technology adoption. Although agricultural research centers are the main suppliers of agricultural technology, they often do not tailor new technologies to the needs of small-scale farmers.

This constraint limits their ability to prioritize and target innovations. However, little is known about the impact of these supply-side constraints on technology adoption. This research will conduct a field experiment to estimate the effect of imperfect targeting on farmers’ take-up of improved crop varieties.

The results of this research will inform agricultural policy about the potential gains in reducing the mismatch between agricultural innovations and farmers’ demand for new technology and how best to do so. The results of this research will improve the pace of development and adoption of new agricultural technologies, increased agricultural yield and farmers’ incomes, and in the process, increase economic growth.

Research has identified factors that limit agricultural technology adoption by focusing primarily on farmers’ failure to adopt. This research project expands the literature by testing an alternative explanation: the supply of agricultural technology has a limited ability to internalize farmers’ heterogeneity in the absence of well-functioning input markets.

This research will conduct a field experiment that simulates counterfactuals to plant breeders’ release decisions to study the impact of those decisions on farmers’ purchases of new seeds. In the first stage of the experiment, on-farm trials will be used to estimate the performance of five new crop varieties and capture farmers’ revealed preferences for these seeds.

Results from the trials will inform the assignment into treatment in the second stage when a random group of farmers receives an offer to adopt the new variety recommended by breeders. For comparison, another group receives an offer for a new variety of their preference. Thus, in the experiment, each farmer effectively faces his or her own synthetic seed market.

The researchers will measure differences in take-up rates between these groups and the impact of differential adoption on farming outcomes. Finally, the research will study farmers’ responses to different levels and sources of information to understand how to improve breeders’ recommendations. The results of this research will improve the pace of development and adoption of new agricultural technologies, increase agricultural yield and farmers’ incomes, and in the process, increase economic growth.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.