An Impact assessment of EAMDA’s banana initiative to increase technology adoption by smallholder farmers in Kenya

Adoption of advanced technologies for improving farm productivity is widely accepted as an important means of increasing farmers’ and national income. Kenya is no different with 73% of its population living in rural areas and agriculture functioning as the primary source of livelihood. However, the contribution of the agriculture sector to real GDP growth fell from 23.9 percent in 2001-2012 to 21.9 percent in 2013-2017 (World Bank, 2019). At the national level, the number of working people in agriculture has been increasing and the sector accounted for about 37% of total employment in 2017. This increase in the number of people relying on agriculture and the decline in productivity makes adoption of new technologies extremely important for the country.

In this study, we assess the impacts of a programme of EAMDA in Kirinyaga county up to 32 months post-intervention. EAMDA promotes banana cultivation, especially the modern varieties and TCB plantlets, by providing information on the benefits of this
technology and associated agronomic practices. A randomized control trial (RCT) was implemented to measure the impacts of information sharing and goal setting interventions on farmers’ adoption of TCB, banana productivity and household income.
In addition, we intend to measure the spillover effects on farmers in the treatment villages who do not receive the training. We adopt two different means of measuring spillover effects: a) varying the intensity of intervention whereby different proportions of
farmers in the treatment villages are provided with the training, and b) measuring the social network of the non-treated farmers with the treated farmers. Finally, we initiate a “behavioural nudge” with half of the treatment group farmers to assess whether setting goals of buying TCB leads to adoption of TCB in their farms.

This report is based on four rounds of survey data. The first round (baseline) was collected before the intervention to measure the baseline condition. The second (midline), third (endline 1) and fourth (endline 2) rounds of surveys were conducted after
6 months, 18 months and 32 months of intervention implementation, respectively. We find that information dissemination through EAMDA’s training increased farmers’ adoption of TCB by 4 percentage points (pp) by midline, which increased by another 9pp at endline 1 for those farmers who also took part in the goal-setting exercise. Surprisingly, we see a large positive effect of an increase of 30 percentage points at endline 2. This large late effect suggests possible learning effects from early adopters in
the treatment villages. Consequently, there is a large reallocation of cultivable land to more banana cultivation from other crops and more spending on banana cultivation observed at endline 2. The magnitude of impact on land use for banana cultivation is
high (almost 10 decimal) and about 75% higher than the control group average at endline 2. This reallocation resulted in a drop in income from non-banana crops.

EfD Authors

Kabubo-Mariara, Jane

Sustainable Development Goals

Zero Hunger