Identifying and evaluating farmer deviations from steps recommended for hermetic postharvest storage of beans in northern Mozambique

Abstract

Despite the fact of calls for studies to identify and assess the effects of user deviations from recommended innovation-practices disseminated to farmers in developing-nation contexts, such research remains rare. This study answers that call by drawing on prior research—which two years earlier had trained farmers in northern Mozambique in an 8-step, improved postharvest bean storage protocol using jerrycans—to investigate deviations (“reinventions”) by users from that protocol’s recommended practices. Results from this study found that while 91.3% of participants had used the storage innovation method at least once (high adoption), nearly half (45%) had deviated in at least one way from the eight recommended steps, with none (0%) reporting any failure of the innovation. Deviations consisted of two major types: skipping at least one of the eight steps (approximately 1 in 3 participants) and adding a step or element to the method (approximately 1 in 5 participants). These combined findings of high adoption, reinvention, and storage method effectiveness provide innovation designers and suppliers insights into the potentially crucial role of reinvention for successfully diffusing stored product innovations in developing nation contexts. The importance of further research into a means for assessing when reinvention has positive, neutral, or negative impacts on innovation goals is also discussed.