Assessing adoption potential in a risky environment: The case of perennial pigeonpea

Abstract

Perennial crops offer the opportunity to harvest from the same plant many times over several years while reducing labor and seed costs, reducing emissions and increasing biomass input into the soil. We use system dynamics modeling to combine data from field experiments, crop modeling and choice experiments to explore the potential for adoption and diffusion of a sustainable agriculture technology in a risky environment with high variability in annual rainfall: the perennial management of pigeonpea in maize-based systems of Malawi. Production estimates from a crop model for the annual intercrop system and data from field experiments on ratooning for the perennial system provided the information to create a stochastic production model. Data from choice experiments posed by a farmer survey conducted in three Malawi districts provide the information for parameters on farmers’ preferences for the attributes of the perennial system. The perennial pigeonpea technology appeared clearly superior in scenarios where average values for maize yield and pigeonpea biomass production were held constant. Adoption was fastest in scenarios where relatively dry growing seasons showcased the benefits of the perennial system, suggesting that perennial management may be appropriate in marginal locations. The potential for adoption was reduced greatly when stochasticity in yields and seasons combine with significant social pressure to conform. The mechanism for this is that low yields suppress adoption and increase disadoption due to the dynamics of trust in the technology. This finding is not unique to perennial pigeonpea, but suggests that a critical factor in explaining low adoption rates of any new agricultural technology is the stochasticity in a technology’s performance. Understanding how that stochasticity interacts with the social dynamics of learning skills and communicating trust is a critical feature for the successful deployment of sustainable agricultural technologies, and a novel finding of our study.

New perennial grains in African smallholder agriculture from a farming systems perspective. A review

“…Empirical evidence for this is provided by Waldman et al (2017), whose choice experiments in Malawi show a lower interest in pigeon pea-growing among farmers with high maize potentials and a higher adoption potential in areas with poor soil fertility and low maize production. Grabowski et al (2019) similarly find that relatively dry seasons seem to demonstrate the potential for perennial pigeon pea to farmers, indicating higher adoption potential in marginal environments.…”

“…Nakasagga et al (2018) for example highlight the potential of perennial sorghum as a drought resistant crop in East African farming systems-provided that locally adapted cultivars can be developed. On the other hand, farmers may perceive perennial grains as risky if they believe that they might act as "pest and disease reservoirs" (Snapp et al 2018), be consumed by wildlife or free-ranging livestock before harvest (Grabowski et al 2019), or be more exposed to depredation due to the longer time they remain in the field (Waldman et al 2017). Stochasticity in performance and social pressure to conform are other important factors affecting adoption and disadoption in risky smallholder environments (Grabowski et al 2019).…”

“…On the other hand, farmers may perceive perennial grains as risky if they believe that they might act as "pest and disease reservoirs" (Snapp et al 2018), be consumed by wildlife or free-ranging livestock before harvest (Grabowski et al 2019), or be more exposed to depredation due to the longer time they remain in the field (Waldman et al 2017). Stochasticity in performance and social pressure to conform are other important factors affecting adoption and disadoption in risky smallholder environments (Grabowski et al 2019). Research on traditional perennial crops like coffee (e.g., Collier 2002) furthermore shows that smallholders may be reluctant to adopt perennials if it takes long before they produce harvestable yields.…”

Crop climate suitability mapping on the cloud: a geovisualization application for sustainable agriculture

“…We contribute this product generation for biogeographic crop suitability niche as real-time information that can be queried, panned, and simulations run with different climatic parameters. Practitioners and stakeholders in sustainable development can use this as input alongside an understanding of the social dimensions, e.g., labor requirements, market structures, gendered responsibilities, infrastructure, and economy, as all are critical for alleviating food insecurity and designing systems that are sustainable across multiple domains 21 .…”

Harnessing perennial and indeterminant growth habits for ratoon cotton ( Gossypium spp.) cropping

“…Ratoon cropping is the production of an indeterminate crop without sowing, and it is common in crops such as rice (He et al 2019), sugarcane (Castro et al 2019), pigeon pea (Grabowski et al 2019) and sorghum (Snapp et al 2019), as well as cotton (Komala, Kumar, and Ganesan 2019). Ratoon cotton is advantageous for sustainable development, and has been cultivated in many cotton-growing countries, such as Australia, Brazil, China, Guyana, Kenya, India, Israel, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa and the USA (Plucknett, Evenson, and Sanford 1970;Khan and Shabbir 1974;Bullen, Granger, and Persaud 1982;Macharia 2013;Khader and Prakash 2014;Zhang et al 2015a).…”