Resilient. Farmers.

Climate change is not a risk for the world’s 475 million smallholder farmers. A risk is the threat of a future event; climate change is here and becoming resilient to its effects is imperative for farmers’ livelihoods. A new crop of agricultural platfor m companies aim to facilitate climate resilience by connecting farmers with integrated offerings of inputs, financial services, training, and markets. But to be successful these companies must first understand how farmers conceptualize climate change, and how they perceive offers that could enable resilience.

To further this understanding, Acumen, funded by the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office’s (FCDO) Strengthening Impact Investment Markets for Agriculture (SIIMA) program, collaborated with the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics and eight agricultural platforms in sub-Saharan Africa. Together, we interviewed 360 smallholder farmers in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania.

We found that farmers associate climate change with extreme heat, a lack of rainfall, and high winds. These cause droughts and soil erosion, and can lead to sick livestock, low crop yields, and an increase in poverty and hunger. To offset these challenges, farmers pursue two main strategies: they pray to God or Allah for help, and they apply agrichemicals, even in droughts where overuse of chemicals may exacerbate the damage. Farmers generally believe these approaches to are successful and avoid more complicated strategies such as crop rotation or adaptive financial services.

Farmers then told us that they appreciated platforms offering high-quality fertilizer and seed, as well as access to training and expert advice. Some farmers welcomed the ability to buy on credit; others worried about obligations they could not repay. All farmers were eager for more training, sometimes more than platforms could provide.

“In the case of our previous farming processes, it wasn’t research-based, and there was no support…but now experts are coming to us and telling us about what we need to do and how.”
MALE FARMER FROM ETHIOPIA

At the same time, farmers struggled when platforms’ contract terms or quality standards were not clear, or when input delivery was not on schedule. Unclear terms and uncertain deliveries create ambiguity, and farmers were deeply averse to having any more ambiguity in their lives. Even farmers who heard about bad experiences secondhand were less willing to experiment with platform offerings.

“We don’t understand how they reject part of our products, and these rejections are impacting our income.”
FEMALE FARMER FROM ETHIOPIA