Learning about barriers to information diffusion in rural Kenya

Our research project, generously funded by IC2, studied potential barriers in agricultural information seeking or sharing among smallholder maize farmers in rural Kenya. For purposes of this research project,we focused on two types of information: external information about soil chemistry in the area, and information collected from farmers who are considered knowledgeable about farming practices.First, to understand whether farmers value this type of agricultural information (and hence would want to obtain it), we ran baseline surveys in which we elicited their valuations for these different types of information. This exercise sheds light on the demand (valuation) for agricultural information and farmers' perception of its "usefulness" in monetary terms.LBJ School of Public Affair