We use a randomized experiment in India to show that improved technology enhances agricultural productivity by crowding in modern inputs and cultivation practices. Specifically, we show that a new rice variety that reduces downside risk by providing flood tolerance has positive effects on adoption of a more labor intensive planting method, area cultivated, fertilizer usage, and credit demand. We find that a large share of the expected gains from new technology comes from crowding in of other investments. Therefore, improved technologies that reduce risk by protecting production in bad years have the potential to increase agricultural productivity in normal years.

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Approximately 30% of the cultivated rice area in India is prone to crop damage from prolonged flooding. We use a randomized field experiment in 128 villages of Orissa India to show that Swarna-Sub1, a recently released submergence-tolerant rice variety, has significant positive impacts on rice yield when fields are submerged for 7 to 14 days with no yield penalty without flooding. We estimate that Swarna-Sub1 offers an approximate 45% increase in yields over the current popular variety when fields are submerged for 10 days. We show additionally that low-lying areas prone to flooding tend to be more heavily occupied by people belonging to lower caste social groups. Thus, a policy relevant implication of our findings is that flood-tolerant rice can deliver both efficiency gains, through reduced yield variability and higher expected yield, and equity gains in disproportionately benefiting the most marginal group of farmers.

Drought and limited availability of water serve as the serious limitation for rice production in rainfed ecosystems. Among the major rainfed rice-cultivating areas, states of eastern India occupy one of the largest drought-prone ecologies in the world. Cultivating drought tolerant rice varieties can serve as the most coherent approach to ensure food security in these areas. International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), along with its national collaborators, has developed drought tolerant rice varieties possessing high yield along with desirable grain quality. One such conventionally bred line, IR74371-70-1-1, has been released with different names in the different countries: in India as Sahbhagi Dhan, in Nepal as Sukha Dhan 3, and in Bangladesh as BRRI Dhan 56. This indicates the suitability of this line to show better performance across the wide range of environments. Sahbhagi Dhan is a short duration variety that has genetic drought tolerance and is more efficient at extracting available moisture from the soil. During drought years, farmers cultivating Sahbhagi Dhan obtained the yield advantage of 0.8 to 1.6 t ha−1 over currently grown long duration as well as traditional varieties. In 2012, when the paddy crop was hit by drought, Sahbhagi Dhan revealed the yield advantage of more than a t ha−1, which reduced to 0.78 and 0.56 t ha−1 during non-drought years of 2013 and 2014, respectively. Data taken from head to head trials during 2017 showed that Sahbhagi Dhan exhibited better performance over the existing rice varieties grown by farmers even under non-drought conditions. The important feature of Sahbhagi Dhan is its evident impact under drought and no yield penalty under favorable conditions over the counterfactual varieties of the same duration. Along with better yield under drought, the important advantage of Sahbhagi Dhan is the short maturity duration of this variety. This allows the farmers to advance the succeeding crop and creates an opportunity for accommodating an additional crop under favorable rainfed ecology, thereby enhancing the cropping intensity. Since the majority of the farmers living in drought prone ecologies are socio-economically under privileged, Sahbhagi Dhan, along with other drought tolerant varieties, can serve as one of the most viable and deliverable technologies for eradicating poverty from these ecologies dependent on rainfed rice.

Highlights Genetic gain for rice grain yield for International Rice Research Institute drought breeding program was estimated. Positive trend of 0.68 %, 0.87 %, 1.9 % under irrigated control, moderate and severe drought achieved. Superiority of new rice varieties over currently grown demonstrated on farmers’ fields. International Rice Research Institute developed rice varieties can protect farmers from crop losses under drought conditions.

Flash flood or submergence is a common phenomenon in rice growing rainfed lowland areas that seriously affects crop establishment leading to severe yield losses. A few submergence-tolerant rice varieties have been developed by introgressing SUB1 gene into mega rice varieties of South Asia. Two of these, Swarna-Sub1 and Sambha Mahsuri-Sub1, are already released in India for the commercial cultivation. Performance of these varieties can be further enhanced through adoption of appropriate management practices both in nursery and in main field. Two on-station field experiments were conducted using Swarna-Sub1 during the wet season (kharif) of 2011 at Rice Research Station, Chinsurah, Hooghly, West Bengal (India). Results of these experiments revealed that the use of lower seeding density (25 g

Flash floods leading to complete submergence of rice plants for 10-15 days is one of the major constraints for rice production, mainly in rainfed lowland areas. In India, 30% of the rice growing area (12-14 M ha) is prone to flash flooding with average productivity of only 0.5-0.8 t ha −1 .

Inadequate learning is an oft-cited friction impeding the adoption of improved agricultural technology in the developing world. We provide experimental evidence that farmer field days — an approach used throughout the world where farmers meet, learn about new technology, and observe its performance — alleviate learning frictions and increase adoption of an improved seed by 40 percent. Further analysis demonstrates that these field days are both cost effective and more impactful for poorer farmers. In contrast, we find no evidence that selecting the first adopters of new technology via participatory village meetings has any effect on future adoption.