Reconciling yield gains in agronomic trials with returns under African smallholder conditions

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Rachid Laajaj, Universidad de los Andes; Karen Macours, Paris School of Economics; Cargele Masso, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture; Moses Thuita, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture; Bernard Vanlauwe, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture

Version:  View help for Version V1

Version Title:  View help for Version Title Version Accepted at Scientific Reports

Name File Type Size Last Modified
Figure 1.xlsx application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet 30.1 KB 07/27/2020 06:08:PM
Figure3_attrition.do text/x-stata-syntax 1.1 KB 07/27/2020 06:22:PM
Readme Rec Yield Gains.docx application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document 13.8 KB 02/20/2018 06:13:AM
Rec Yield Gains Subplot Panel Analysis Scientific Reports.do text/x-stata-syntax 18.8 KB 07/28/2020 05:21:AM
Rec Yield Gains hh level Analysis Scientific Reports.do text/x-stata-syntax 7.5 KB 07/27/2020 06:16:PM
Reconciling_Trials_Farmers.dta application/x-stata 388.2 KB 07/27/2020 06:03:PM
YieldGap_subplots_ghosts.dta application/x-stata 659.7 KB 07/28/2020 05:22:AM
agdif_statsforpred6.dta application/x-stata 31.1 KB 03/06/2020 05:32:AM
figure3_dta.dta application/x-stata 1.8 KB 02/28/2020 10:40:AM

Project Citation: 

Laajaj, Rachid, Macours, Karen, Masso, Cargele, Thuita, Moses, and Vanlauwe, Bernard. Reconciling yield gains in agronomic trials with returns under African smallholder conditions. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-07-28. https://doi.org/10.3886/E120430V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary Increased adoption of improved agricultural technologies is considered an essential step to address global poverty and hunger, and agronomic trials suggest intensification in developing countries could result in large yield gains. Yet the promise of new technologies does not always carry over from trials to real-life conditions, and diffusion of many technologies remains limited. We show how parcel and farmer selection, together with behavioural responses in agronomic trials, can explain why yield gain estimates from trials may differ from the yield gains of smallholders using the same inputs under real-life conditions. We provide quantitative evidence by exploiting variation in farmer selection and detailed data collection from research trials in Western Kenya on which large yield increments were observed from improved input packages for maize and soybean. After adjusting for selection, behavioural responses, and other corrections, estimates of yield gains fall to being not significantly different from zero for the input package tested on one of the crops (soybean), but remain high for the other (maize). These results suggest that testing new agricultural technologies in real-world conditions and without researcher interference early in the agricultural research and development process might help with identifying which innovations are more likely to be taken up at scale.
Funding Sources:  View help for Funding Sources DFID-ESRC Growth Research Program (JES-1362222); World Bank and Standing Panel for Impact Assessment (SIAC 1); French National Research Agency (ANR) (ANR-17-EURE-0001); INRA

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms Yield Gain; Smallholder Farmer; Agriculture; Kenya; Agronomic trial; Africa
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage Siaya, Africa, Kenya
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 1/1/2012 – 12/31/2015
Collection Date(s):  View help for Collection Date(s) 1/1/2012 – 12/31/2015
Universe:  View help for Universe Households in rural areas in Siaya, Western Kenya. Mix of randomly selected representativ households and households selected by the community to participate in the agronomic trials. 
Data Type(s):  View help for Data Type(s) administrative records data; survey data


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