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Do grassroots interventions relax behavioral constraints to the adoption of nutrition-sensitive food production systems?
In many developing countries, agricultural policies and programs are often designed in a way to promote productivity growth with modern inputs and technologies, and with limited reference to the nutrition gains that can be made through production diversification. We test whether grassroots programs can relax behavioral constraints inhibiting the adoption of diversified nutrition-sensitive production systems. We use a series of lab-in-field experiments and survey instruments in Odisha, India to elicit male and female farmers’ preferences for risk, aversion to loss, empowerment and aspirations for one’s self and children. We find that respondents in villages where grassroots interventions were promoted showed significantly lower levels of risk aversion, higher levels of loss aversion and higher aspirations for themselves and their children, along with improvements in production and consumption diversity. Insights into the prevalence of behavioral constraints and interventions that relax such constraints fills an important knowledge gap in how to design programs that promote more nutrition-sensitive food production systems.
Risk and Ambiguity Preferences and the Adoption of New Agricultural Technologies
Advances in agricultural development have largely been a direct result of increased usage of new technologies. Among other important factors, farmers perceptions of risks associated with the new technology as well as their ability or willingness to take risks greatly influences their adoption decisions. In this paper we conduct a series of field experiments in rural India in order to measure preferences related to risk, potential loss, and ambiguity. Disaggregating by gender, we find that on average women are significantly more risk averse and loss averse than men, though the higher average risk aversion arises due to a greater share of women who are extremely risk averse.
Who are the entrepreneurs? A case for accelerated service economy for agricultural machinery in Odisha
In this note, we discuss the traits of machine owners that are associated with entrepreneurial behavior and ways in which information about these traits could be used to improve the targeting of mechanization subsidies to better foster the emergence of custom-hire services for farm machinery in Odisha.
Understanding compliance in programs promoting conservation agriculture
Land degradation and soil erosion have emerged as serious challenges to smallholder farmers throughout southern Africa. To combat these challenges, conservation agriculture (CA) is widely promoted as a sustainable package of agricultural practices. Despite the many potential benefits of CA, however, adoption remains low. Yet relatively little is known about the decision-making process in choosing to adopt CA. This article attempts to fill this important knowledge gap by studying CA adoption in southern Malawi. Unlike what is implicitly assumed when these packages of practices are introduced, farmers view adoption as a series of independent decisions rather than a single decision. Yet the adoption decisions are not wholly independent. We find strong evidence of interrelated decisions, particularly among mulching crop residues and practicing zero tillage, suggesting that mulching residues and intercropping or rotating with legumes introduces a multiplier effect on the adoption of zero tillage.
New modalities for managing drought risk in rainfed agriculture
In this paper we explore the potential for a new approach to managing drought risk among rainfed rice producers in Odisha, India. Droughts have historically been a serious constraint to agricultural production in rainfed agricultural systems, with droughts resulting in significant reductions in both yields and cultivated area, in turn leading to significant impacts on rural livelihoods and food security. Scientists and policy makers have proposed various strategies for managing risks, with limited success. In this study we consider two such strategies, specifically drought-tolerant rice and weather index insurance. While neither drought-tolerant cultivars nor weather index insurance products...
Insuring against droughts: Evidence on agricultural intensification and index insurance demand from a randomized evaluation in rural Bangladesh
It is widely acknowledged that unmitigated risks provide a disincentive for otherwise optimal investments in modern farm inputs. Index insurance provides a means for managing risk without the burdens of asymmetric information and high transaction costs that plague traditional indemnity-based crop insurance programs. Yet many index insurance programs that have been piloted around the world have met with rather limited success, so the potential for insurance to foster more intensive agricultural production has yet to be realized. This study assesses both the demand for and the effectiveness of an innovative index insurance product designed to help smallholder farmers in Bangladesh manage risk ...
Can agricultural aspirations influence preferences for new technologies?
In the face of increasing environmental stresses, there is a critical need to improve water-use efficiency in many arid and semiarid agroclimatic zones. Drip irrigation is a high-efficiency irrigation technology that can improve water-use efficiency in currently irrigated areas and transform areas that are not otherwise irrigable in practice. Although adoption of drip irrigation is growing rapidly in India, adoption is low in neighboring Pakistan. The authors of this paper undertook a discrete choice experiment framed around the hypothetical subsidized purchase of a drip irrigation system in four districts of Punjab, Pakistan. The nonrepresentative sample of adopters and nonadopters in the s...
