Does knowledge co-creation lead to adoption of agroecological practices? A cluster-randomized control trial in India

The major research question this experiment is trying to answer is if involving farmers in an intensive process of co-creating farming models that are based on agroecological principles leads to their adoption, specifically on the homestead lands compared to the farmers who are not involved intensively in a co-creation process and are just informed about agroecology.
To test this, we have two treatment groups- one in which farmers receive information about agroecology through a co-creation process, one in which farmers receive information about agroecology in a way which doesn’t involve co-creation, and a control group with no intervention.

2025-08-01

2025-09-01

a) Farm level outcomes:
- Adoption of agroecological practices on farms (for example: Growing vegetable crops, Recycling of inputs and output, Use of farm manure)
- Adoption of revised homestead model
- Yield of vegetable crops
- Soil health as self-reported by farmers (measured through soil fertility, soil erosion)
- Labour productivity on homestead
- Labour intensiveness (how intensively labour is used on homestead land)
- Share of women in total family labour used on homestead
- Total family time spent in making bio-inputs

b) Household level outcomes:
- Index measuring perceptions towards agroecological principles
- Index measuring knowledge about agroecology
- Household income
- Household dietary diversity measured using Minimum dietary diversity score (MDD)
- Women’s empowerment as measured by WEAI (Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index)
- Gender equity

a) Village level impacts
- Farmers’ perceptions about the practice of agroecology in their village
- Farmers’ perceptions about share of homestead land under agroecology
- Farmers’ perceptions about change in total area under productive use

b) Other outcomes:
- No of family members who migrate in the last 1 year
- Primary sources of information on agriculture matters by the household
- Degree of household participation in the community
- Locus of control
- Household food security (measuring using Food Insecurity Experience scale – FIES)

This study involves a cluster randomized control trial (CRCT) to study how information delivery through co-creation of knowledge could impact the likelihood of adoption of agroecological practices as compared to non-co-created information delivery mechanisms.

For the purpose of the RCT, farmers will be divided into three groups: control group and two treatment groups- treatment group 1 (T1) and treatment group 2 (T2).

T1 group will consist of farmers with whom information about agroecology will be developed in a co-creation process by directly involving the farmers in key steps such as making a shared vision about the future, introduction to agroecological principles and how farmers understand agroecology in local life, introduction to home-garden/ homestead based farming models and how to apply agroecological principles to homestead lands, discussion about improvement in homestead farming models, areas of capacity building of farmers, and village action plan on final types of agroecological models and practices to adopt or adjust. The co-creation process is expected to generate customized farmer suited action plans which will be implemented and reinforced collectively as a group (village). Additional financial support (in terms of seed kits) will be given if the farmers decide to adopt homestead-based farming models.

T2 group will consist of farmers who will receive information about agroecology in a non-co-creation process where farmers will be simply introduced to agroecological principles, to the home-garden/ homestead-based farming models and how to apply agroecological principles to homestead lands, without engaging them in any discussion about the provided information, their vision, capacity building needs, or about whether the model suits them or not. Here, we try to imitate the standard government extension delivery mechanism. Additional financial support (in terms of seed kits) will be given if the farmers decide to adopt homestead-based farming models.

The control group will capture business as usual scenario and will consist of farmers who will not receive any training or support.

Not available

The randomization was done using STATA software (a computer-based software).

The intervention will be delivered at the level of villages. Hence Village is the unit of randomization.

Yes

60 villages

1100 households

20 villages in co-creation training, 20 villages in non-co-creation training, and 20 villages in control.
18 households would be interviewed per village, yielding roughly 370 households in control, 370 in co-creation and 370 in non-co-creation group.

One of the major crops grown by farmers on homestead land is maize. So we take maize yield as one of the primary outcomes. From previous data collection on status of agroecological farming in Mandla, farmers who were practicing agroecological practices such as using organic inputs like cow dung, cow urine, intercropping, integrated farming, etc. on their homestead had an average maize yield of 225.7 kg/acre (SD= 206 kg/acre). Farmers who did not adopt any such practice, had an average maize yield of 140 kg/acre (SD=231 kg/acre). Based on this, we calculated the total sample size needed for the experiment, which is 996 households, 50 clusters (villages) to get a power of 80% and effect size of 62% at 5% level of significance.