When farmers adopt a practice that has the potential to improve soil fertility, researchers naturally – and nearly always – assume they are doing so for the obvious reason: to improve soil fertility. But that’s not always the case. For example, researchers in western Kenya recently found that farmers were planting Tephrosia vogelii, a shrub widely promoted to improve soil fertility, to control moles on their farmsFarmers may also adopt certain agroforestry practices because they expect to receive benefits that have little or nothing to do with improving productivity on their farms. These may include enhanced social status resulting from project officials visiting their farms, access to credit, and even the prospect of the project providing jobs for their children. This is the phenomenon of pseudo-adoption.

These are among the findings of a major study conducted in western Kenya by researchers from the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), the World Agroforestry Centre and Wageningen University, and published in the journal Agricultural Systems.

“Earlier studies from the area suggested that there had been good uptake of the improved tree fallow technologies designed to enhance soil fertility,” explains Evelyne Kiptot of KEFRI, “so we were surprised to find that many farmers had actually abandoned the technology. Even more surprisingly, many of those who had used improved tree fallows were ‘pseudoadopters.’

” There has been a long history of agroforestry interventions in western Kenya, stretching back to the late 1980s. One of the main aims has been to introduce farmers to technologies that will restore soil fertility and thus increase yields and incomes. The first decade of research was patchy in terms of success. Although the technologies proved to be beneficial in experimental plots, transferring them to the farmers’ fields proved difficult. An alternative approach, based on greater community participation, began in 1997, when KEFRI, the World Agroforestry Centre and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) launched a pilot project in 17 villages in Siaya and Vihiga districts. This exposed all farmers in each village to agroforestry practices designed to improve soil fertility.The main practice was improved fallows; that is, the planting of fastgrowing, nitrogen-fixing shrubs on a fallow plot. After four years of intensive dissemination, the pilot project came to an end. Another four-year project, whose purpose was to encourage farmers to diversify into high-value crops in order to feel the benefits of investing in soil improvement, began in 2001, with KEFRI and the Centre again playing a key role in promoting agroforestry.

The study by Kiptot and her colleagues focused on these last eight years. They found that the process of adoption was highly dynamic. There was a steady increase in the number of farmers using improved fallows after 1999, but the number declined dramatically in 2000 (See figure 1). There was an increase again in 2001 and 2002, followed by a further decline.

 “Most of these trends were mainly influenced by factors unrelated to improving soil fertility,” explains Kiptot. “Many of the farmers adopted the technologies because they provided them with access to credit, and many because they were able.

 Despite the intense efforts to promote agroforestry, the researchers found that 91 per cent of farmers in Vihiga district and 53 per cent in Siaya district either stopped using improved fallows after initial experimentation, or never adopted them. The reasons why they stopped, or never started, included a lack of sufficient land, no noticeable increase in crop yield, a lack of a market for tree seeds after 2000, difficulties in obtaining credit, and having to forgo a season’s crops for trees that did not provide edible products.

 “In principle, using agroforestry technologies may be a good idea,” says Kiptot, “but when you look at the situation on the ground, where over 60 per cent of farmers live below the poverty line on small landholdings with low soil fertility, it may be impractical. You can’t ask farmers to forgo a season’s crops to grow trees that yield no tangible financial benefit. They simply can’t afford to do that when they’re so poor.” Many farmers fallow their fields and it was thought that improved fallows would be an attractive venture for farmers. But it proved not to be, as farmers chose to allocate their time and scarce cash for other activities.

 So were the researchers responsible for promoting agroforestry in western Kenya aware of the pseudoadoption phenomenon highlighted by Kiptot and her colleagues? Co-author Stephen Franzel, principal agricultural economist at the World Agroforestry Centre, believes they were, at least towards the end of the project. “It’s natural for researchers and extensionists to think that farmers are using a new practice because it’s improving farm productivity, which is the reason it was introduced in the first place,” he says. “But we all need to be more aware of the broadercontext in which farmers operate, and recognize that their reasons for testing or adopting a practice may have nothing to do with its intrinsic value.

”During recent years, there has been an increase in research on the adoption by farmers of agroforestry technologies.The fact that most studies have failed torecognize the significance of pseudo-adoption can be attributed, in part, to their short-term nature: most studies have been based on a single snapshot in time and ignored the fact that agroforestry adoption is a dynamic process with a lengthy timescale. Furthermore, many adoption studies have failed to differentiate between different categories of users. They have also failed to consider the wider socio-economic, political andinstitutional settings in which farmers are embedded.

 The study by Kiptot and her colleagues focused on the adoption of a very narrow range of agroforestry technologies, which are now recognized as being less useful in western Kenya than originally thought. In no way does this detract from the fundamental importance of agroforestry as a means of improving soil fertility and livelihoods.However, the study does show that researchers and development practitioners need to be very aware of the many incentives for pseudo-adoption, and they should try to avoid projects that offer perverse and unsustainable incentives, particularly if they are trying to learn something about the attractions of particular agroforestry technologies for farmers.

The study also found that if the soil fertility potential of leguminous species, such as those used in western Kenya, is to be fully realized, they must yield tangible and immediate benefits for the farmers, thus compensating for the fact that they are obliged to forgo a season’s crop. Farmers are much more likely to look kindly upon tree species which yield timber, food, fodder or seeds that can be sold in the market, than ones that don’t. “One of the key lessons from our study,” says Kiptot, “is that researchers need to be fully aware of the needs and priorities of farmers, and target their research accordingly

Futher reading
Kiptot E, Hebinck P, Franzel S, Richards P. 2007. Adopters, testers or pseudo adopters? Dynamics of the use of improved tree fallows by farmers in western Kenya. Agricultural Systems 94 (2007) 509-519. http://worldagroforestry.org/Library/listdetails.asp?id=49732

For more information,
contact Steve Franzel,
s.franzel@cgiar.org