Agricultural extension to improve yields of staple food crops and close the yield gap in Sub-Saharan Africa often entails general recommendations on soil fertility management that are distributed to farmers in a large growing area. Site-specific extension recommendations that are better tailored to the needs of individual farmers and fields, and enabled by digital technologies, could potentially bring about yield and productivity improvements. In this paper, we analyze farmers' preferences for high-input maize production supported by site-specific nutrient management recommendations provided by an ICT-based extension tool that is being developed for extension services in the maize belt of Nigeria. We use a choice experiment to provide ex-ante insights on the adoption potentials of site-specific extension services from the perspective of farmers. We control for attribute non-attendance and account for class as well as scale heterogeneity in preferences using different models, and find robust results. We find that farmers have strong preferences to switch from general to ICT-enabled site-specific soil fertility management recommendations which lend credence to the inclusion of digital technologies in agricultural extension. We find heterogeneity in preferences that is correlated with farmers' resource endowments and access to services. A first group of farmers are strong potential adopters; they are better-off, less sensitive to risk, and are more willing to invest in a high-input maize production system. A second group of farmers are weak potential adopters; they have lower incomes and fewer productive assets, are more sensitive to yield variability, and prefer less capital and labor intensive production techniques. Our empirical findings imply that improving the design of extension tools to enable provision of information on the riskiness of expected outcomes and flexibility in switching between low-risk and high-risk recommendations will help farmers to make better informed decisions, and thereby improve the uptake of extension advice and the efficiency of extension programs.

中文翻译：

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特定地点推广服务支持的农民对高投入农业的偏好：来自尼日利亚选择实验的证据

为提高主粮作物产量和缩小撒哈拉以南非洲的产量差距而进行的农业推广，通常需要向大面积种植区的农民分发关于土壤肥力管理的一般性建议。特定地点的推广建议更适合个体农民和田地的需求，并由数字技术支持，可能会带来产量和生产力的提高。在本文中，我们分析了农民对高投入玉米生产的偏好，该建议由基于 ICT 的推广工具提供的特定地点的养分管理建议支持，该工具正在为尼日利亚玉米带的推广服务开发。我们使用选择实验从农民的角度提供关于特定地点推广服务采用潜力的事前见解。我们使用不同的模型控制属性不出席并考虑类别以及偏好的规模异质性，并找到稳健的结果。我们发现，农民非常倾向于从一般性建议转向基于 ICT 的针对特定地点的土壤肥力管理建议，这为将数字技术纳入农业推广提供了可信度。我们发现偏好的异质性与农民的资源禀赋和获得服务的机会相关。第一批农民是潜在的强大采用者；他们更富裕，对风险不太敏感，更愿意投资于高投入的玉米生产系统。第二组农民是弱潜在采用者；他们收入较低，生产性资产较少，对产量波动更敏感，更喜欢资本和劳动密集程度较低的生产技术。我们的实证结果表明，改进推广工具的设计以提供有关预期结果风险的信息以及在低风险和高风险建议之间切换的灵活性将有助于农民做出更明智的决策，从而提高对推广建议和推广计划的效率。