Making decisions about agroecological innovations: perspectives from members of farmers' organizations in Burkina Faso

There is a growing promotion of agroecological techniques in many Sub-Saharan African countries as a response to the current climatic variability challenges. In the case of Burkina Faso, a number of studies have mentioned the role of Farmers' Organizations (FOs) in the promotion of agroecological techniques. Although previous studies have highlighted the role of FOs in agroecology, more detailed studies on the effectiveness of their intermediation activities and especially those focusing on the way the FOs influence farmers' agroecological innovations decisions are still scarce. This study addresses this gap by providing the answer to the question of what drives farmers' decisions to implement agroecological innovations and how their FOs influence these decisions. The results show that the implementation of agroecological innovations varies, with some farmers using many and others few of the innovations promoted by their respective FOs. Farmers' implementation of these innovations is largely influenced by the actions of their FOs on at least one of the three drivers of individual motivation or innovation behavior (Vroom 1964): instrumentality, valence, and expectancy. Finally, the study calls for policy actors to increase funding support to FOs for widening their continuous provision of agroecology development activities.

Automated summary

There is a growing promotion of agroecological techniques in many Sub-Saharan African countries. In Burkina Faso, the role of Farmers' Organizations (FOs) in promoting agroecological techniques has been mentioned. However, there is still a lack of detailed studies on the effectiveness of FOs' intermediation activities and their influence on farmers' decisions to implement agroecological innovations. This study addresses this gap by examining the drivers of farmers' decisions and the influence of FOs on these decisions.