Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Matching new agricultural technology with the demand for innovation of low-income farmers

小农在采用看似有利可图的新农业技术方面往往行动迟缓，尽管这些创新对农业生产力增长和经济发展至关重要。本研究项目解决了这个问题，并确定了提高农业研究和技术采用效率的方法。虽然农业研究中心是农业技术的主要提供者，但它们往往不根据小农的需要调整新技术。这种约束限制了他们确定创新的优先级和目标的能力。然而，人们对这些供给侧限制对技术采用的影响知之甚少。本研究将进行田间试验，评估不完全定向对农民采用改良作物品种的影响。这项研究的结果将为农业政策提供有关减少农业创新与农民对新技术需求之间不匹配的潜在收益以及如何最好地做到这一点的信息。这项研究的成果将加快农业新技术的开发和采用速度，提高农业产量和农民收入，并在此过程中促进经济增长。研究主要关注农民未能采用农业技术，从而确定了限制农业技术采用的因素。本研究项目通过检验另一种解释扩展了文献：在缺乏运作良好的投入市场的情况下，农业技术的供给内部化农民异质性的能力有限。这项研究将进行一项田间试验，模拟植物育种者释放决定的反事实，以研究这些决定对农民购买新种子的影响。在实验的第一阶段，农场试验将用于评估五种新作物品种的性能，并捕捉农民对这些种子的偏好。试验的结果将为第二阶段的处理分配提供信息，届时一组随机农民将收到采用育种者推荐的新品种的提议。作为比较，另一组收到了他们偏好的新品种。因此，在实验中，每个农民都有效地面对他或她自己的合成种子市场。研究人员将测量这些群体之间的采用率差异，以及不同采用率对农业成果的影响。最后，本研究将研究农民对不同水平和信息来源的反应，以了解如何改进育种者的建议。这项研究的成果将加快农业新技术的开发和采用速度，提高农业产量和农民收入，并在此过程中促进经济增长。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Small-scale farmers are often slow to adopt seemingly profitable new agricultural technologies even though these innovations are crucial for farm productivity growth and economic development. This research project addresses this question and identifies ways to improve the efficacy of agricultural research and technology adoption. Although agricultural research centers are the main suppliers of agricultural technology, they often do not tailor new technologies to the needs of small-scale farmers. This constraint limits their ability to prioritize and target innovations. However, little is known about the impact of these supply-side constraints on technology adoption. This research will conduct a field experiment to estimate the effect of imperfect targeting on farmers’ take-up of improved crop varieties. The results of this research will inform agricultural policy about the potential gains in reducing the mismatch between agricultural innovations and farmers’ demand for new technology and how best to do so. The results of this research will improve the pace of development and adoption of new agricultural technologies, increased agricultural yield and farmers’ incomes, and in the process, increase economic growth. Research has identified factors that limit agricultural technology adoption by focusing primarily on farmers’ failure to adopt. This research project expands the literature by testing an alternative explanation: the supply of agricultural technology has a limited ability to internalize farmers’ heterogeneity in the absence of well-functioning input markets. This research will conduct a field experiment that simulates counterfactuals to plant breeders’ release decisions to study the impact of those decisions on farmers’ purchases of new seeds. In the first stage of the experiment, on-farm trials will be used to estimate the performance of five new crop varieties and capture farmers’ revealed preferences for these seeds. Results from the trials will inform the assignment into treatment in the second stage when a random group of farmers receives an offer to adopt the new variety recommended by breeders. For comparison, another group receives an offer for a new variety of their preference. Thus, in the experiment, each farmer effectively faces his or her own synthetic seed market. The researchers will measure differences in take-up rates between these groups and the impact of differential adoption on farming outcomes. Finally, the research will study farmers’ responses to different levels and sources of information to understand how to improve breeders’ recommendations. The results of this research will improve the pace of development and adoption of new agricultural technologies, increase agricultural yield and farmers’ incomes, and in the process, increase economic growth.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.