Abstract
Agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa remains low despite the potential and economic and food security importance of agriculture. Improved technologies are available but not always accessible, affordable, and adopted by small-scale producers. One CGIAR and national partners (National Agricultural Research and Extension Services) had been developing improved varieties to solve many of farmers' production challenges, but turnover of these improved varieties has been slow. Small-scale seed businesses lack incentives to actively promote new varieties given weak demand. Little is known about the drivers of varietal replacement and product substitution, and the role of downstream market actors such as traders, processors, and consumers in this process. The overarching research question is: "What drives farmers’ and consumers’ variety replacement and product substitution?"
In Nigeria, two important staple crops are maize and cowpea, but they persistently have low productivity. For example, maize yield is at 1.62 ton per hectare compared to 4.2 ton per hectare in Ethiopia and about 5-6 ton per hectare average in Southern Africa and globally (FAOSTAT). The low productivity is reported to be due to poor soil condition, low fertilizer use, poor rains, poor management practices, and low adoption of improved varieties and certified seeds. Based on a nationally representative household survey in 2018 (LSMS), only 11% of maize farming grew improved maize varieties and 7% used certified seeds. Only 3% of cowpea farmers grew improved cowpea varieties and only 2% used certified seeds. The aim of this study is to verify these adoption rates, understand why adoption is very low, and test interventions to help increase adoption and improve farmers’ productivity and incomes.
The study will evaluate the impact of production- and consumption-related interventions to address the behavior constraints of farmers and consumers in adopting new varieties of maize and cowpea. These constraints may be related to information and risk.
Interventions: Provision of seed trial pack (2-kg each of maize and cowpea) and information intervention on consumption traits and different cooking recipes.
The study will employ a cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT), with villages to different treatment arms:
Treatment 1: Villages assigned to receive seed trial pack only
Treatment 2: Villages assigned to receive consumption-related information only
Treatment 3: Villages assigned to receive both seed trial pack and consumption related information (combined)
Control group: No intervention
The cRCT will follow a 2x2 factorial design.