What do people in rural agricultural communities really want their lives to look like? What are the drivers that matter to those who farm? Understanding the aspirations of all members of smallholder households – particularly women, youth and marginalized groups – is key to avoiding bias and ensuring the success and sustainability of development initiatives.
This timeline highlights milestones in efforts to better understand the aspirations of rural farming households in Africa. It features unique perspectives, lessons learned and insights drawn from multiple research projects and initiatives through an ongoing long-term cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Get in in touch if you want to learn more
For those that didn’t manage to join the Roundtable discussion, here the link to the recording
Building on the results and the breadth of the contributions within the Special Issue speakers will highlight research directions and gaps, then proceed to start a discussion on what development stakeholders can learn for their daily activities and project design.
Speakers will outline the difference that emerges within common approaches to looking at aspirations which we would argue are different concepts – i.e., aspirations and ambitions. The theoretical differentiation will be followed by a brief outline of various approaches on measuring those and lead into a group discussion on the implications of the differences for future research strategies. The second part of the roundtable will then focus on practical implications of the Special Issue for development planning and design. Speakers will outline the bottom-up view on aspirations as well as the top-down view in order to kick-start a group discussion on what we can learn from the different view and how these could be harmonized.
Looking into the aspirations of rural people provides insights into how they earn, invest, make decisions within the household, hold government accountable, make technology choices, and engage in other future-oriented behaviors.
While aspirations-based theories in economics have largely focused on people’s ‘capacity to aspire’, or rather their level of ambition relative to those around them, we use the term ‘aspiration’ to refer to what people aspire to do, with specific attention to the livelihood activities with which they wish to engage. Gender and age play an important role in aspiration formation. While aspirations of young people in agriculture have been studied, desires and ambitions of rural women have largely been overlooked. Yet, the topic is becoming even more important as many men migrate in search of more lucrative employment opportunities outside their rural homes, and many women assume the role of primary farmer.
One region where this is happening at scale is the eastern drylands of Kenya. In our recent study there, we interviewed 88 women and 50 men of all ages to understand where they see their future opportunities and what role farming plays in their aspired future.
Abstract/Summary
In this editorial introduction to the Special Issue “Rural aspirations in Africa – Livelihood decisions and rural development trajectories” we outline current views on aspirations and their relevance for development research, projects, and approaches. Using several examples from Africa, we outline how the combination of the different theoretical perspectives, case studies and regional backgrounds provides deeper insights about the role of aspirations in shaping rural areas. The distinct entry points of the ‘bottom up’ local aspirations for future lives, the ‘top down’ aspirations as visions for change and the process of negotiating between these provide novel insights into directions for development action as well as for future research in the field of aspirations in the development arena.
Authors
Kai Mausch, Dave Harris, Javier Revilla Diez
Abstract/Summary
Another Special Issue contribution online:
Rural development is a political topic in which debate has been more focussed on externally identified needs than on demands or aspirations of the rural population and polarised between the attractions of urban income earning opportunities and the importance of rural farming communities for national food provision. The heterogeneity of local aspirations and their implications for development have barely been considered. We explore the aspirations of residents of three contrasting regions in Kenya that vary in their agricultural and off-farm potential. We argue that opportunities are a major framing influence on aspirations but there is important, and routinely overlooked, diversity within the communities which could inform future options for effective development. We outline how development initiatives could be redesigned to align more closely with aspirations. However, aspirations are a complex concept and, while our approach offered novel insights, these would be enriched when combined with household survey data.
Authors
Kai Mausch, Dave Harris, Luke Dilley, Mary Crossland, Tim Pagella, Jules Yim, Emma Jones
Since early 2021 the aspirations framework has been used under a project that aims to to ensure smallholder families have year-round access to nutritious foods while simultaneously diversifying income generating opportunities. Here we are using an aspirational assessment tool to enable the project to improve the matching of the portfolios to farmers’ needs and future visions. Assessing the connection of aspirations to adoption among participants of a previous portfolio project allows us to take aspirations more directly into account when designing and supporting the adoption of the portfolios in a new context. One of the guiding research questions here is: How can different portfolios of food trees and crops be tailored to suit different smallholder farming systems and farmers’ aspirations?
Abstract/Summary
Another Special Issue contribution online:
In the limited research on farming aspirations, little attention has been paid to the narratives which frame and shape them, and the ways in which the aspirations of those who farm intersect with the goals of extension services. Drawing on multimethod research conducted in Meru county, Kenya, we demonstrate how aspirations are not only situated within a consideration of personal circumstances, but are shaped in crucial ways by networks of relations and by the perceived possibilities aforded by material and cultural resources. We further highlight the accounts of state extension agents that link a lack of engagement with the desires and needs of those who farm to the failure of agricultural development initiatives. We argue that an engagement with aspirations opens up a route to understanding the obstacles and potentialities that matter to those who farm and, as such, might enable more responsive development initiatives centred on the perceptions and desires of those who farm.
Authors
Luke Dilley, Kai Mausch, Mary Crossland, Dave Harris
Abstract/Summary
Another Special Issue contribution online:
In Makueni County, Kenya, an area experiencing intensifying migration lows, we investigate the aspired futures of rural men and women using a novel methodology combining a narrative-based survey tool, focus group discussions and semistructured interviews. Our indings indicate that, in the absence of men and presence of norms restricting women’s movement out of rural life, women are becoming increasingly engaged in farm management. Women’s aspirational narratives focused on commercialising farm activities, likely relecting their changing agricultural opportunity space and new realities as farm managers. We highlight that only considering aspirations at the household level overlooks difering individual contributions, agency over various household income streams and individuals’ changing roles throughout life. Based on our indings, we make recommendations for further aspirations research including explicit consideration of intrahousehold heterogeneity and how individual strategies and aspirations interrelate and are negotiated at the household level to build an overall livelihood strategy.
Authors
Mary Crossland, Ana Maria Paez Valencia, Tim Pagella, Kai Mausch, Dave Harris, Luke Dilley, Leigh Winowiecki
Every year, 12 million young people enter the labour market across the African continent.
Economists and policy makers differ about how they should be absorbed into the labour market. Some experts believe that only agriculture can create enough jobs. Others argue for a focus on the agricultural sector and industrialisation especially with increasing urbanisation.
Choosing which policy avenue to follow requires a good understanding of the aspirations of young people.
Abstract/Summary
While there is a consensus that rural poverty has to be reduced, there are two opposing views on the role that agriculture can play in this regard: a “farm-based” and an “off-farm led” development paradigm where the respective other sector is merely a complementary income source during a transition period. The latter paradigm is supported by studies finding that rural youth in sub-Saharan-Africa, are not particularly interested in agriculture. However, policy discourse on youth in agriculture often situates their aspirations as either full-time farming or non-farming, thus either supporting or opposing one or the other of the two paradigms, while neglecting the shades of grey between these two extremes. Using a mixed methods approach – a household survey and a narrative-based tool called SenseMaker – to collect data from both adults and youth in 261 households in rural Kenya, this study suggests that this categorical understanding needs to be revisited to inform rural development strategies based on the actual aspirations of rural youth.
Authors
Katie LaRue, Thomas Daum, Dave Harris, Kai Mausch
Virtual Special Issue / Special Collection in Outlook on Agriculture
https://journals.sagepub.com/topic/collections-oag/oag-1-technology_adoption_in-agriculture/oaga
Biography
I am Luzia Deißler, a PhD student at the Leibniz University Hannover and a research fellow with World Agroforestry since 2021. My PhD research is supported by the research scholarship by ATSAF, ACINAR (Academy for International Agricultural Research) which aims to connect new university researchers with CGIAR centers. I started my academic path with a BSc in Biology and adjusted my rather nature scientific focus by taking the master’s program of International Horticultural Economics. This change of perspective allowed me to start research in the field of developmental economics. I was introduced to Kai by my university supervisor Prof. Ulrike Grote and started my studies on intrinsic drivers and determinants of agroforestry adoption in Kenya and Zambia. From a nature scientist perspective, I value clear observations, but when considering human behavior, it is essential to also consider intrinsic aspects that might not be apparent at first sight. Hence, human decision making cannot be limited to a few observable economic factors. Therefore, understanding and quantifying people’s aspirations holds significant potential for explaining decision making with respect to numerous livelihood choices. Understanding the human behavior may be key to addressing current challenges.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted everything everywhere causing delays, changes of plans and cancelation of plans. Adjustments had to be made for the special issue too. Despite this, 10 contributions have since been submitted and are under review. While we are waiting for the first papers to come online, a few thoughts on the pandemic and the opportunities to realign development efforts
Especially for young people, diverse portfolios for rural populations should be the core part of a well-thought out rural investment strategy, say researchers.
The first results of the Kenyan census conducted in 2019 reveal a gradual demographic transition towards smaller families coupled with a growing urban population.
Still, even for this dynamic African nation that recently rose to ‘middle-income’ status, its future inclusive prosperity and ability to reach the Sustainable Development Goals will depend on how the rural population, most of whom are farmers with a few acres each of rain-fed land, fare in the decade to come.
Rural households are the most vulnerable to the climate crisis because their livelihoods depend on erratic rainfall. Across sub-Saharan Africa, rural areas have higher rates of poverty, illiteracy and child mortality as well as less access to basic services, such as electricity and safe sanitation. The widening gulf between rural and urban zones is fuelling large-scale migration of rural youth to burgeoning African cities.
Understanding rural household aspirations and taking them seriously in development planning could offer great potential in shaping the future of rural spaces. – A short recap of what we have been working on in the past.
More updates to follow soon
The European Journal of Development Research just accepted our proposal for a Special Issue on rural aspirations entitled ‘Rural aspirations in Africa – Livelihood decisions and rural development trajectories’. Teaming up with the DFG funded research group ‘Future Rural Africa‘ we will provide a wide-ranging overview of research into the aspirations of rural people. Kai Mausch and Dave Harris will serve as guest editors alongside Javier Revilla Diez to coordinate the submissions from about 50 contributing authors across 15 manuscripts. The special issue will represent the coming together of a set of papers that are cross-methodological and cross-disciplinary in approach and examine rural aspirations across a range of subject areas including land use change and social-ecological transformations; migration; value chains; gender; and youth.
Gathering stories from more than 600 households is easy, analysing the content takes much longer. Here is a word cloud preview of what stories have been shared.
Introduction
My name is Katie LaRue and I am currently pursuing a Master Degree at Hohenheim University in Stuttgart, Germany. My studies revolve around environmental protection and agricultural food production, which seeks to answer the pressing problem of feeding a growing population sustainably. In culmination of my program, I wanted to see first hand the backbone of the world’s agriculture industry. So when I stumbled upon a flyer advertising a thesis opportunity in Kenya that would address the aspirations of rural farmers, I knew this was my chance. After a few months of tedious preparation, I arrived at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya and am well on my way to witnessing the
Biography
Master Student, Hohenheim University
Katie LaRue is a master’s student at Hohenheim University and a research fellow with the World Agroforestry Center, Nairobi. Her research delves into rural livelihood strategies and the puzzling questions surrounding the slow adoption rates of agricultural technologies amongst these households. Her current work explores the connection between household aspirations and adoption rates in different agro-ecological zones within Kenya. Katie has a BSc in International Relations from Grand Valley State University and worked as an English teacher in Moscow, Russia for two years before pursuing her current degree in Environmental Protection and Agricultural Food Production. She was introduced to Kai Mausch and Dave Harris’ aspirations research through her supervisors Regina Birner and Thomas Daum and were eager to join the team to support her master thesis project.
The enumerator training phase of the project, led by Jules Yim and Emma Jones, kicked off with a 3-day event at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.
Quote: Kai: “I have run many enumerator training sessions and the enumerators had been part of several surveys as well. However, they really engaged during the training as they were fascinated by the different approach and really got excited about the stories they would be collecting.”
Jules: “After months of hard work reviewing and editing the instrument, we were ready to take it from a ‘lab’ environment into the real world. This can only be done in collaboration with our enumerators, whom we consider to be our partners in the field.”
After Emma set up the devices and the SenseMaker® app, Jules spent the morning presenting the concept of narrative research and gave a basic introduction to complex systems. This led to an overview of potential pitfalls and limitations in the field, and was followed by many intelligent questions from the enumerators about the approach and foreseen complications in the field. For example, ‘How do we interview “the spouse” in a setting where people have multiple wives?’; ‘What if the respondents don’t talk about agriculture at all?’. Kai then outlined the objectives of the Aspirations project and the important part the enumerators would play in it – they are not merely scribes or interviewers, but local facilitators and translators.
In the afternoon, the enumerators were instructed to immerse themselves in the training by becoming part of it. Each of them had to tell a story about their own aspiration. Following that, after having been briefed about the logistical intricacies of SenseMaker® interviewing, the enumerators were divided into groups of three and asked to interview each other in a simulation of the field work.
Enumerators were then sent into the ‘field’ – in this case the UN Avenue outside the ICRAF campus in Gigiri – to gather a minimum of two stories each from random people on the street. The exercise took about an hour and they returned both with stories and feedback about the process, which they reflected upon. Suggestions for edits to the instrument were also considered and implemented after consultation with the wider team.
On the final morning of the workshop, the decision was made to release the enumerators early as they had absorbed the training faster than expected, and could start to gather stories in their home areas.
Attendees: Kai Mausch, Dave Harris, Jules Yim, Emma Jones (Cynefin Centre), Mary Crossland, Katie LaRue
The design phase of the survey instrument (link to the survey tool) for this project, led by Jules Yim and Emma Jones, kicked off with a 2-day workshop at Bangor University, UK. Ellie Snowden, a researcher at Cynefin Centre, provided remote support via video conference.
Kai: “I was fascinated by their approach in designing the survey instrument. It appeared chaotic, yet was very structured. It was very interesting to witness how everything came together in the end.”
The session opened with an introduction to complexity science, narrative research and their relevance to human systems, in this particular case, aspirations. The team affirmed the objectives of the project and the themes that emerged from them. The literature review, based on previous publications and additional searches conducted prior to the workshop, was presented and then mapped to the themes and objectives.
Triads
The team properly commenced designing the survey tool. Each of the themes were redrafted as ‘modulators’, in complexity jargon, forces that modulate a complex adaptive system, within which we are in agreement that aspirations sit. Each modulator was then broken down into its individual components until a modulator landscape for the entire project was completed, and each modulator’s components reassembled into triads.
Jules: “After weeks of discussion, we were pleased to host the ICRAF and ICRISAT team at Bangor University. They proved that they were more than up to the intellectual and practical challenges that lay ahead.”
Dyads
All assumptions and hypotheses were spelt out across the team and from related literature with regards to aspirations; several were chosen to be tested in this project. Dyads are formed by making an assumption, e.g., that parents from rural households discourage their children from becoming farmers.
In the story shared, parents…
Encourage their children to become farmers <–> discourage their children from becoming farmers
Stones
Stones are normally designed for monitoring and evaluation. In their simplest form they consist of an XY axis, with ‘Stones’ labelled using items such as different stakeholder perspectives (‘How I saw it’, ‘How I think my father saw it’, etc.) or programme components (‘Water sanitation tablets’, ‘Plumbing’, ‘Sewage’, etc.) for the respondent to drag and drop onto the canvas.
In this project, a decision was made to design Stones to evaluate different perspectives in a household towards farming, and the risk-return mindset towards the various income streams a household may pursue, such as crops, livestock, employment, business opportunities, etc.
Prompting Questions
We kicked off by designing prompting questions, which can be any combination of text, photo or video. A decision was made to use text and after some deliberations we settled on – ‘Imagine your life 10 years from now; tell a story about how you got to that point from this present day.’
Analysis Categories
In the SenseMaker® environment, ‘analysis categories’ are typically configured as multiple-choice questions. Two types exist – 1) relating to the respondent, such as demographic ones around age, gender, household size, household income, geographical location, and 2) relating to the story shared by the respondent, such as emotional tone, frequency of occurrence, or to whom the respondent would tell the story. These categories allow the analysts/researchers to filter and slice the data during analysis, or create customized Boolean queries to compare and contrast patterns of distribution.
Review and Finalization
The input of this process was scribed into a document template by Ellie Snowden, and reviewed by the team within two weeks. The instrument was then configured into a SenseMaker® website. (link to site)
Attendees: Kai Mausch, Dave Harris, Jules Yim, Emma Jones, Ellie Snowden (Cynefin Centre), Mary Crossland (second day), Tim Pagella (Bangor University)
Biography
PhD student, Bangor University
Mary Crossland is a PhD student at Bangor University and a research fellow with the World Agroforestry Centre, Nairobi. Her research explores how agricultural interventions to restore degraded lands can and cannot influence the livelihood trajectories of rural households in the drylands of Kenya and Ethiopia, and the degree to which they can contribute to reducing poverty, improved food security and advancing gender equality. Mary has a BSc in Environmental Science from the University of Southampton (2010-2013) and worked as an agroforestry researcher at the Organic Research Centre (2015-2016) before pursuing a MSc in Agroforestry at Bangor University in 2016. Introduced to Dave Harris and Kai Mausch by her PhD supervisor Tim Pagella, she joined the team in July 2018 curious to see how using SenseMaker could help explore the changing role of agriculture in the lives of rural men and women.
After an initial chat with Prof. Regina Birner from the University of Hohenheim, we agreed to look for an MSc student to work on the aspirations project and started advertising the opportunity.
Biography
Senior Consultant, Cognitive Edge
In her role as a Senior Consultant with Cognitive Edge and a qualified SenseMaker® practitioner, Jules is involved in the design, capture and analysis of client projects. She has worked with public, private and third sector clients in Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Americas and Africa. She was based in Singapore (where she was born and raised) from 2009-2014, and relocated to the UK 2014-2018 to help set up the Cynefin Centre for Applied Complexity at Bangor University which has since housed CE’s non-commercial and public good projects.
Jules earned her BA (double major) in English Linguistics and Literature, and prior to CE worked in diverse industries such as high-end automotive tuning, e-commerce and wealth management.
Biography
Emma is a Research Officer at the Cynefin Centre and has been working with SenseMaker®, in various research contexts, for over 2 years. Within the Cynefin Centre, Emma co-leads ‘The Making of Meaning’ programme: an international, collaborative project exploring how we find meaning and purpose in our lives in the 21st Century. A sub-branch of this project, Environment & Place, is dedicated to questions of culture, tradition, identity, heritage, conservation, agriculture, and climate change. Emma also holds a BSc in Psychology, and an MSc in Psychological Research, specialising in the cognitive neuroscience of decision-making. This project provides the perfect place to mesh these two interests together and explore how people find meaning in their environment, decisions and aspirations.
The Cynefin Centre for Applied Complexity was officially launched in April 2016 with an inaugural lecture by Professor Dave Snowden at Pontio in Bangor University. Dave Harris, who was present, decided to get in touch with the Cynefin Centre team soon after to arrange a meeting.
Understanding the aspirations of rural households as they relate to agriculture (or not) had so far eluded the ICRISAT/ICRAF/Bangor University team, which was the problem statement Harris presented to the Cynefin Centre team at the first meeting. A decision was made to have the ICRAF/ICRISAT team over from Kenya for a session to scope the feasibility of the SenseMaker® approach and tool.
Initial consultations on our respective research foci led to spirited discussions about the viability of the narrative-based distributed ethnography approach in this field of study, especially when it involved the aspirations of rural households. This took up most of the first day, and at the start of the second day we properly delved into the design of a potential SenseMaker® project.
Amongst the outputs of this two-day workshop was an agreement to jointly bid for funding to pilot a SenseMaker® project in Kenya, and to publish, where appropriate.
With the approval of the activity under CRP PIM, we reached out to the Department of Psychology at Bangor University, UK. This partnership was aimed at ensuring that the psychology of these very complex life choices could be accounted for.
Eleanor Heather joined the team and the work gained momentum. We started working on a background document that discusses the influence of behavioral biases on human decision-making, and organized a week-long workshop in Kenya to design a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE). The method involves asking individuals to state their preference over hypothetical alternative scenarios, goods or services. Each alternative is described by several attributes and the responses are used to determine whether preferences are significantly influenced by the attributes and their relative importance. We believed that this method would be effective in exploring the trade-offs involved in deciding among various possible income streams and investment options.
Kai “There was a huge buzz when we started working with Eleanor as everyone thought this would be a very interesting and fruitful collaboration and the method seemed to fit our needs to explore trade-offs very well. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out as planned, but that is part of research.”
After lengthy discussions on the influences that are likely to play a role in the decision processes of smallholder households, we agreed on a set of variables that we believed were key in shaping final income portfolios. Of course, these needed to be verified with the target group to ensure that they are understandable and relatable. However, holding an ad hoc discussion with a group of farmers began to cast some doubts on relatability, as the concepts we were hoping to address were highly abstract and long-term. The reality in rural areas appeared to be much more focused on immediate needs and short-term plans because of the unpredictability of farming and the limited options available to poor rural households. We went back to the drawing board and revised the initial set to include more focused and relatable variables that were then tested in two additional focus group discussions. Again, however, the narrow set of options and short-term factors that are necessary to run a DCE proved to be inappropriate for exploring longer-term aspirations of rural household members. This left us disappointed and worried that we would not be able to deliver what we had promised.
Our colleague Simone Verkaart has been working on the link between diversified incomes and adoption of agricultural technologies for her PhD, so we were happy to bring her on board for this activity and expand the scope.
Simone “When Dave and Kai approached me with the option of joining the aspirations work and linking it to my then recently published paper on linking agricultural technology adoption to household income composition, I thought it would be an additional perspective and a great fit for my overall PhD thesis “poor farmers”
Biography
Senior Economist
Kai Mausch has been working on rural development for more than 10 years, exploring solutions to rural poverty from both the agricultural as well as the non-agricultural perspective. Before joining ICRAF he worked for ICRISAT from 2010-2018 where he planned, coordinated and implemented economic projects and program components at both the regional and global level. Topics ranged from adoption, dissemination and impact evaluation to value chain analysis and improved targeting of agricultural interventions in rural areas. While there, he piloted and popularized tablet-based surveys and organized several episodes of the popular Kenyan TV show ‘Shamba Shape up’ to communicate research results and increase turnaround speed and broader adoption of farming options. Kai’s global work includes stints in Vietnam, where he worked on his PhD, Malawi and Kenya – both with ICRISAT. He received his MSc while working with ICIPE (Nairobi) and in 2009 received his PhD in Economics from the School of Economics and Management, Leibniz University of Hanover, Germany.
Biography
Dave is an Honorary Fellow at ICRISAT and an Honorary Lecturer at Bangor University, UK. Previously he was Senior Advisor to the Research Methods Group at the World Agroforestry Centre (2014-2017). He was co-manager of the DFID Plant Sciences Research Programme at Bangor between 1995 and 2011 and then Principal Scientist (Agro-ecosystems/Climate Change) with ICRISAT based in Nairobi, Kenya (2011-2013). He has 35 years; experience of agricultural research in less-developed countries, particularly in the fields of crop physiology, agronomy and participatory on-farm collaboration, including long-term assignments in India (1982-1984), Botswana (1987-1992) and St. Lucia (1992-1995) and many shorter assignments throughout South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. His current research focuses on understanding why rural households adopt/don’t adopt/dis-adopt improved agricultural technologies and on the consequences of farm size for rural livelihoods.
Rainfed farming in Sub-Saharan Africa is risky, hard work and small parcels of land limit the returns from agriculture that many farming families could achieve. Engagement in other income generating activities such as wage labour, casual labour, running small businesses, etc., is widespread. These off-farm and non-farm activities have implications for the attributes that farmers value in agricultural technologies and more generally, for how they approach their own farming activities. The ongoing debate about those implications has two contrasting arguments:
- Generating a higher proportion of household income outside the farm will enable and encourage farmers to take more risks on their farms, and so increase the possible returns from increased investment.
- Increasing the share of household income generated through potentially insecure off-farm employment will lead to the farm being treated as a safety net. Farmers will therefore be more risk-averse in their farming activities, preferring lower yields but more secure crop and livestock choices and practices.
Dave Harris “I have been working on the ‘small farm problem’ for a long time and to be able to explore how we can better assist smallholder households has been on my mind since I got into this line of research.”
Whichever of the above emerges as the dominant paradigm in the smallholder sector will have implications for both technology generation and transfer, and hence for the CGIAR as the demand for technology will look very different in the two scenarios. If farmers have higher risk tolerances, research energy should be focused on input-intensive varieties with high expected yields, whereas research should focus on more resilient crops with greater resistance to abiotic and biotic stressors if farmers are not willing to take risks. The resulting trade-off of lower expected yields (and therefore income or ‘value’) would be justified because the farm-generated income is viewed only as a safety net.
A joint proposal from ICRISAT and ICRAF to explore this issue was submitted to CRP PIM for funding from 2014 under the title, “How does the income composition of rural households influence preferences for, and adoption of, new agricultural technologies for smallholder farms? A discrete choice experiment exploring attribute trade-offs to inform technological research and extension.”
Donors
atsaf via ACINAR (Academy for International Agricultural Research)
Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany
Project Team
Dr Kai Mausch
Senior Economist (CIFOR-ICRAF)
Dr Dave Harris
Senior Associate (CIFOR-ICRAF)
Jules Yim
Cynefin Centre
Emma Jones, MSc
Cynefin Centre
Dr Tim Pagella
Lecturer in Forestry (Bangor University)
Dr Mary Crossland
Associate Scientist, CIFOR-ICRAF
Katie LaRue
Masters Student, University of Hohenheim and ICRAF
Dr Luke Dilley
Akita International University (Japan), Research Associate (ICRAF)
Luzia Deissler, MSc
PhD candidate, University of Hannover and CIFOR-ICRAF
About Project
Start Date: Jan, 2014
Due Date: Dec, 2025
Project Status:
Institutions Involved
