Social Network Targeting of Agricultural Technology : Adoption , Input Substitution and Yield Effects
Social Network Targeting of Agricultural Technology : Adoption , Input Substitution and Yield Effects
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农业技术的社交网络目标:采用、投入替代和产量效应
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发表时间：
2018
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通讯作者：
A. Dillon
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作者：
A. Dillon
在低收入国家自给自足的农民中，农业技术采用的潜在收益主要取决于谁采用新技术、家庭如何在成员之间内部重新分配资源，以及这种重新分配是否实现了产量增长。在西非萨赫勒地区，很少有自给自足的农民在种植高粱时采用新的种子品种或化肥，高粱是这些农民的主要主食，也是种植最广泛的旱地作物。西非萨赫勒地区的农民在可用投入和资源方面面临着无数限制，在我们的研究中，这些被证明是化肥和改良种子等生产投入的关键补充。为了解决这些限制，我们进行了一项随机对照试验，向布基纳法索的高粱种植者介绍了一种在种植时使用少量化肥的技术，并向随机分配的一组农民提供了免费的工具包，其中包括矿物质肥料和改良种子。为了确定推广这一技术的有效方法，我们将村庄随机分为两种形式的社会网络，目标是有影响力的村民，或者是更常见的非目标方法，即农民通过随机分配获得免费工具包。我们发现，从长远来看，有针对性的方法在鼓励更广泛的采用方面要有效得多。在确定采用的潜在收益方面，我们发现，已经使用矿物肥的较小土地所有者从我们的鼓励设计中看到了相当大的产量反应。
Among subsistence farmers in low-income countries, the potential gains from agricultural technology adoption depend crucially on who adopts new technologies, how households internally reallocate resources amongst members, and whether yield gains are realized as a result of this reallocation. In the West African Sahel, few subsistence farmers adopt new seed varieties or fertilizer when planting sorghum, the main food staple and most widely cultivated dryland crop among these farmers. Farmers in the West African Sahel face a myriad of constraints in terms of available inputs and resources, which in our study, prove to be critical complements to production inputs such as fertilizer and improved seed. To address some of these constraints, we conducted a Randomized Control Trial in which we introduced sorghum farmers in Burkina Faso to a technology for applying small amounts of fertilizer at the time of planting, and provided a randomly assigned subset of farmers with free kits comprised of mineral fertilizer and improved seed. To identify effective methods for diffusing adoption of this technique, we randomized villages to either two forms of social network targeting of influential villagers, or to a more common non-targeted approach where farmers received free kits by random assignment. We find that the targeted approach is much more effective in encouraging broader adoption in the longterm. In terms of identifying potential gains to adoption, we find that smaller landholders who were already using mineral fertilizer saw considerable yield responses from our encouragement design.