Last Mile Extension and Market Access Solutions: Impact Evaluation of OCP School Lab and Village Input Fairs in Côte d'Ivoire

Last registered on May 21, 2025

Pre-Trial

General Information

Title

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0016012

Initial registration date

May 13, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

May 21, 2025, 2:20 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name

Andrew Dillon

Affiliation

Northwestern University

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Tanguy Bernard

PI Affiliation

University of Bordeaux

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Alban Ahoure

PI Affiliation

Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2025-04-01

End date

2027-05-31

Keywords

Agriculture, Behavior

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

Last mile problems are a feature of rural economies where the poorest farmers often have the least access to extension advice and access to markets. We propose to test the effect of two last mile solutions and their integration. The OCP School Lab integrates a half-day extension training with soil quality measurement and information provided to rural villages. The Village Input Fair model (Dillon and Tomaselli 2024) creates rural input markets by organizing ag-dealers in the post-harvest period to facilitate input purchase orders. Independently, extension or market access may increase farmer input demand, knowledge, yields and welfare. Bundled, the OCP School Lab and Village Input Fairs may further increase the key outcomes by resolving two missing markets: that of agricultural information and that of market access.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Ahoure, Alban , Tanguy Bernard and Andrew Dillon. 2025. "Last Mile Extension and Market Access Solutions: Impact Evaluation of OCP School Lab and Village Input Fairs in Côte d'Ivoire." AEA RCT Registry. May 21. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.16012-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date

2025-11-01

Intervention End Date

2026-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

This RCT aims to answer the following research questions:
● How heterogeneous are farmers’ soil beliefs relative to the soil testing result? Do differences in initial soil beliefs relative to the soil tests cause farmers to update their beliefs?
● What is the change in farmers’ input demand when:
○ they have personalized soil testing and input recommendations?
○ they have access to post-harvest village input fairs in their village?
○ they have access to soil testing and village input fairs?

Our main outcome variables include:
● Soil quality beliefs
● Input purchase and use
● Plot yields and agricultural income
● Household welfare measures including poverty and food security.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

The evaluation design is a village-level RCT with villages stratified on demographic data, like population and geographic location. Spillovers between villages are limited by geographic distance. The treatment consists of two interventions implemented independently in select villages and collectively in select villages.
1. Intervention 1: OCP School Lab in Côte d'Ivoire is designed as a business development and marketing initiative aimed at unlocking market demand for fertilizers and fostering customer loyalty. The program operates through 'technico-commercial caravans' that combine soil testing with training on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). The program aims at increasing the yields and the incomes of smallholder farmers by offering training sessions on agricultural practices and also providing information on soil needs with fertilizer recommendations.
2. Intervention 2: The Village Input Fair (VIF) is a market-creation innovation that organizes one-day markets in villages during the post-harvest season. The innovation integrates the market organization principles of timing, liquidity, supply chain reliability, and interlinked transactions. At these fairs, input dealers accept advance orders for agricultural inputs to be delivered later during the planting season. The objective of these fairs is to ensure that the supply meets the demand from farmers by connecting them with input dealers in their villages.
The evaluation is a clustered randomized control trial designed to see the effects of both interventions on adoption of fertilizer. Our impact evaluation will have three treatment arms and one control group with no intervention for comparison:
• Treatment arm 1: Only OCP School Lab organized in the village
• Treatment arm 2: Only Village Input Fair organized in the village
• Treatment arm 3: Both OSL and VIF implemented in the village
• Control group: No intervention in the village

Experimental Design Details

Not available

Randomization Method

Randomization done in office on a computer

Randomization Unit

Treatment is randomized at the village level.

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

120 villages

Sample size: planned number of observations

2400 households

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

• Treatment arm 1: Only OCP School Lab organized in the village - 30 villages
• Treatment arm 2: Only Village Input Fair organized in the village - 30 villages
• Treatment arm 3: Both OSL and VIF implemented in the village - 30 villages
• Control group: No intervention in the village - 30 villages

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name

IRB Approval Date

IRB Approval Number

Analysis Plan