Abstract
Can improving access to mobile extension improve agricultural productivity? Recent evidence suggests both significant and insignificant ways in which SMS-based agricultural information could affect farming outcomes. It is unclear if variations in the programs' design or the methodological challenges in evaluating the programs cause wide-ranging impacts. Extension hotline services provide rapid, unambiguous information by agricultural experts over the phone, tailored to time- and crop-specific shocks. Using methods from experimental economics, we randomly distributed the hotline number to generate exogenous variation in the access to farming information. We conducted our study among 300 farmers in the South Indian state of Karnataka. Our results show that eliminating informational inefficiencies increases farmers' average yields for a high-stakes pigeon pea crop that faced adverse aggregate shock. The impact on the yield is through the adoption of cost-effective and improved farming practices. However, we do not observe any effect on the crops that were not affected by the shock. Our findings reveal that advisory recommendations customized to time- and crop-specific shocks are associated with a greater impact on agricultural productivity.
Highlights
Agriculture is central to sustainable development and poverty reduction [1, 2]
While Tumkur was one of the districts preselected for implementing a large-scale agricultural program (S1 Description in S6 Table), we chose Gubbi for two reasons. (a) After completing the baseline survey under the agricultural program, we noticed the early signs of an sterility mosaic disease (SMD) outbreak in Gubbi. (b) Access to the Kisan Call Centre (KCC) hotline is available, but farmers are unaware of its services
Governments in the developing world are increasingly acknowledging the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in enhancing agricultural productivity and reducing poverty
Summary
Agriculture is central to sustainable development and poverty reduction [1, 2]. The context of agriculture worldwide has changed dramatically, and despite universal implementation and expansion of the agricultural extension program, significant challenges remain [3, 4]. Phone-based agricultural advisory services have evolved to take advantage of mobile phone networks’ emergence and broader coverage [5,6,7,8]. Some studies have suggested both significant and insignificant ways SMS-based agricultural information could affect farming outcomes [8,9,10]. It is unclear if variations in the programs’ design or the methodological challenges in evaluating the programs cause wide-ranging impacts [11]. With access to SMS-based information on mobile phones, farmers can contact members of their social networks more efficiently, thereby intensifying the probability of spillovers among treatment groups.
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