Data-driven Evidence on Adoption and Diffusion of Agriculture Innovations in Ethiopia

"Learn about the design and targeting of rural interventions to enhance the adoption of agricultural innovations."

The agricultural sector in Ethiopia has seen sustained growth in recent decades, hand-in-hand with economic growth and poverty reduction. Ethiopia is a hotspot of international agricultural research collaboration, with almost all of the centers of CGIAR being represented in Addis Ababa and working in partnership with the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research. We identify 18 agricultural innovations that are potentially disseminated at scale and then integrate novel data collection approaches about them into the Ethiopian Socioeconomic Survey (ESS) in 2018/19. We show that in aggregate, there is substantial adoption of agricultural innovations among smallholders, poor households, and young and female farmers. Considering the diffusion of agricultural innovations one at a time, however, provides a different (and incomplete) picture, as different innovations reach different households and regions. The innovations we find to be most widely diffused (soil and water conservation practices; improved maize varieties; crossbred chickens) are closely linked to supportive government policies.

The webinar discusses implications for the design and targeting of rural interventions aiming to enhance the adoption of agricultural innovations. We'll propose to start by considering farmers as critical consumers who can be offered a portfolio of possible innovations to fit heterogeneous needs. The webinar also discusses what it takes to collect this kind of rich data on agricultural innovations, the importance of partnerships for better data, and introduces some frontier topics on measurement that have broad applicability for monitoring agricultural development projects.