Social Learning in Agriculture: Does Smallholder Heterogeneity Impede Technology Diffusion in Sub-Saharan Africa?

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 SubSaharan 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.

Keywords: Agricultural Productivity, extension, Heterogeneity, Livestock, Social learning

JEL Classification: O12, O13, O33, Q16