Center for Effective Global Action

Policymakers interested in improving the productivity and profitability of smallholder farmers in SubSaharan Africa and South Asia need to understand what prevents farmers from adopting technologies and effectively accessing markets. We summarize recent experimental evidence on constraints to agricultural technology adoption among smallholder farmers in these regions. The evidence presented builds from a series of policy insight summaries produced by the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI). The underlying studies have been selected (and in many cases funded) by ATAI because they provide evidence using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to understand and improve the low take-up of agricultural technology in the developing world. These summaries have been structured intellectually by the economic constraint they seek to address, and we present here the four constraints that have seen the largest amount of experimental work in recent years: credit and savings; risk; information; and input and output markets. In the sections that follow, we briefly motivate the role of each specific constraint, provide a summary of the recent experimental evidence and key outstanding questions, and work to draw a series of conclusions relevant for agricultural policy and practice.