Harnessing digital technology to improve agricultural productivity?

Subramanian, A. (2021) Harnessing digital technology to improve agricultural productivity? PLoS ONE, 16(6), e0253377. (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0253377) (PMID:34181659) (PMCID:PMC8238233)

Abstract

Can improving access to mobile extension improve agricultural productivity? Recent evidence suggests both significant and insignificant ways in which SMS-based agricultural information could affect farming outcomes. It is unclear if variations in the programs’ design or the methodological challenges in evaluating the programs cause wide-ranging impacts. Extension hotline services provide rapid, unambiguous information by agricultural experts over the phone, tailored to time- and crop-specific shocks. Using methods from experimental economics, we randomly distributed the hotline number to generate exogenous variation in the access to farming information. We conducted our study among 300 farmers in the South Indian state of Karnataka. Our results show that eliminating informational inefficiencies increases farmers’ average yields for a high-stakes pigeon pea crop that faced adverse aggregate shock. The impact on the yield is through the adoption of cost-effective and improved farming practices. However, we do not observe any effect on the crops that were not affected by the shock. Our findings reveal that advisory recommendations customized to time- and crop-specific shocks are associated with a greater impact on agricultural productivity.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: The author acknowledges the support of the ESRC-DFID funded research project with ESRC Grant Reference: ES/J009334/1.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Subramanian, Dr Arjunan

Creator Roles

Subramanian, A.: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing

• Authors: Subramanian, A.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > Adam Smith Business School > Economics
• Journal Name: PLoS ONE
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• ISSN: 1932-6203
• ISSN (Online): 1932-6203
• Published Online: 28 June 2021
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2021 Arjunan Subramanian
• First Published: First published in PLoS ONE 16(6):e0253377
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
190468		Information, market creation and agricultural growth.	Arjunan Subramanian	Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)	ES/J009334/1	BS - Economics