Abstract

Evaluating a large-scale program for dairy farmers in Uganda, we show that a simple version of the “contact farmer” extension model can meaningfully increase smallholder farmers’ revenues. While the program provides no monetary incentives, we find evidence that two other ingredients — backstopping by professional extension agent and advertising pro-social motivation — reinforce its impacts.  Though it has been hypothesized to be a major impediment to social learning in Sub-Saharan African agriculture, we do not find smallholder heterogeneity to condition the effectiveness of the approach: farmer trainers trained to take this heterogeneity into consideration do not perform better; moreover, we find no statistical evidence that program effects vary by farmers’ characteristics.

Co-authors : Luc Behaghel et Jeremie Gignoux)

Practical information