The (perceived) quality of agricultural technology and its adoption: Experimental evidence from Uganda
Speaker: Caroline Miehe
Concerns about the (perceived) quality of agricultural technologies are increasingly recognized as a key constraint to their adoption by smallholder farmers in low-income countries. Focusing on high-yielding maize varieties, we test two hypotheses through a randomized controlled trial involving 350 agro-dealers and 3,500 farmers in Uganda. First, we assess whether limited adoption is driven by poor seed quality resulting from agro-dealers’ lack of knowledge about proper seed handling and storage, which we address through a targeted training. Second, we examine whether information asymmetries discourage quality provision by introducing a crowd-sourced information platform, analogous to consumer review sites like Yelp. We find that the clearinghouse intervention improves outcomes for both sellers and buyers. In particular, while agro-dealers do not change practices that are likely to directly improve seed quality, they invest more in signaling quality, and provide better customer service, leading to increased sales. Furthermore, although farmers do not switch to higher-rated sellers, the clearinghouse improves their perceptions of seed quality, resulting in greater adoption and improved harvest and sales outcomes. In contrast, the agro-dealer training has no measurable impact on either agro-dealers or the farmers they serve.
Bio
Caroline Miehe is a researcher at NOVAFRICA, Nova University Lisbon and holds the degree of Doctor of Economics from KU Leuven. She specializes in Development Economics and is involved in the design and evaluation of several field experiments and randomized control trials in sub-Saharan Africa. Caroline has recently worked for LICOS (KU Leuven) and the Development Economics Group (Wageningen University) and has taught courses at the University of Potsdam, KU Leuven, and Nova University Lisbon. She has published articles in academic journals such as World Development, Economic Development and Cultural Change, and Agricultural Systems, and authored reports, a book chapter, and various blogs.