Improving Smallholder Farmer Response to Agricultural Demonstrations

Agricultural demonstrations can increase technology adoption, but farmers may struggle to apply lessons beyond the specific conditions shown. A randomised trial with 797 tomato farmers in Eastern Uganda finds that adding mechanistic explanations to standard fertiliser demonstrations improved farmers’ ability to understand and adapt the technology. Treated farmers earned 9% higher simulated profits in an adaptive fertiliser-choice task, made more agronomically sound choices, and achieved 14% higher real yields. The findings suggest that extension programmes should go beyond demonstrating that technologies work by equipping farmers with an understanding of why they work, and training extension agents to incorporate mechanistic explanations into agricultural advice.