Complementarities Between Agro-Climate Advisory Services and Inputs in Ethiopia

In many low- and middle-income countries, small-scale farmers still lack access to essential inputs and services they need to improve their farm productivity. Concurrently, climate change is expected to exacerbate existing challenges faced by small-scale farmers, such as managing rainfed agricultural systems and responding to the spread of pest and plant diseases. As managers of high-risk production, small-scale farmers need information on seasonal and intra-seasonal climate conditions, access to credit and quality farm inputs, and linkages to output markets to make profitable and well-informed decisions.

In Ethiopia, a public-private partnership was established in 2019 between the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, LERSHA, and government institutions to deliver agro-climate advice bundled with complementary services to more than 100,000 small-scale farmers. Through this service, farmers access farm inputs, hire mechanization services, and/or receive tailored agro-climate advice (advisory services) through a digital platform, call center, or in-person agents stationed across the service area. 

Researchers tested whether providing smallholder farmers with bundled digital agro-climate advisory services alongside improved access to agricultural inputs and mechanization would lead to better decision-making and increase productivity compared to advisory services alone or no intervention. In ten randomly selected villages across the two districts of Aleltu and Gimbichu, farmers were assigned to receive either: (1) facilitation of access to inputs and services through a hybrid digital platform coordinated by an in-person agent, (2) agro-climate advisory services, or (3) both services combined.

Early results from the pilot suggest high uptake and use of climate information among participant farmers, especially those receiving both advisory and input services. These usage rates were also shown to rise over time. By comparison, farmers receiving only climate advisory services showed lower rates of applying climate information after the second survey round. Application of climate information amongst those who received input services only was the lowest out of each of the treatment groups. Despite these positive findings, the project faced challenges such as difficulty in continuously staffing in-person agents needed to facilitate access to inputs and services, lack of a robust feedback mechanism to tailor advisory services to participant farmers, and limited agroecological variation across districts, which may have reduced observable differences in adaptation strategies. To build on these insights, the team will finalize the endline survey and generate key lessons and research questions to explore further.