 Agricultural Transformation and Farmers' Expectations: Experimental Evidence from UgandaJacopo Bonan, Harounan Kazianga and Mariapia Mendola No 458, Development Working Papers from Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano Abstract: Adoption rate of profitable agricultural technologies in Africa remains low and variations in adoption choices across farmers are yet to be fully understood. This paper studies Ugandan subsistence smallholders’ decisions to adopt profitable cash crops (oilseeds) that can allow them to transition to commercial farming. More specifically, we exploit the randomized roll-out of a national extension service program in order to investigate the role of farmers’ expectations in crop take–up decisions as well as the extent to which ex-ante beliefs about crop profitability explain adoption. We find that, randomly assigned extension services lead to an increase of oilseeds adoption by 15%, and farmers who under-estimate the oilseeds price at baseline are the most likely to adopt new crops. By testing how farmers update their beliefs after being randomly provided with extension services, our results point towards changes in expectations as an important driver of agricultural technology take-up. Keywords: Technology Adoption; Commercial Farming; Randomized Controlled Trial; Uganda (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csl:devewp:458 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Development Working Papers from Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano Contact information at EDIRC. |
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