Center for Effective Global Action

We explore heterogeneity in soil quality, lack of knowledge and autonomy as explanations for the low adoption of improved agricultural practices using a ran-domized field experiment that combined localized soil analyses, tailored input rec-ommendations, extension services and an in-kind grant. We find that while neither the degree of recommendation specificity (plot vs cluster level) nor the extent of au-tonomy (defined as the freedom of choice in spending the in-kind grant) had any effect on adoption during the intervention, farmers with autonomy had substan-tially higher adoption of improved practices two years after the intervention ended.