Agricultural advisory services generally rely on interpersonal knowledge transfers in which agricultural extension agents visit farmers individually or in groups to provide information and advice. This approach is not always effective and has often proved hard to bring to scale, particularly in highly dispersed smallholder farming systems. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been advanced as a promising way to overcome these problems associated with information delivery. We evaluate the effectiveness of an ICTmediated approach to deliver agricultural information in a field experiment conducted among small-scale maize farmers in eastern Uganda. The approach consists of three complementary technologies: First, we investigate the effectiveness of video as a means of delivering information, transferring knowledge, increasing technology adoption, increasing productivity, and improving well-being. Second, we quantify the additional impact of augmenting video with interactive voice response (IVR) technology—a more demand-driven approach to information provision. Third, we estimate the additional effect of time-sensitive short message services (SMSs) that remind farmers about key agronomic practices and technologies. We find that video is effective in delivering information, with households that were shown short videos on how to become a better maize farmer performing significantly better on a knowledge test, applying more of the recommended practices, and using inputs more effectively than households that did not see this video. These same households also reported maize yields about 10 percent higher than those that did not see the video. However, the incremental effects of IVR and SMS technologies were found to be limited.

中文翻译：

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为小农提供农业建议的信息和通信技术：来自乌干达的实验证据

农业咨询服务通常依赖于人际知识转移，其中农业推广人员单独或成组访问农民以提供信息和建议。这种方法并不总是有效，而且往往难以规模化，特别是在高度分散的小农农业系统中。信息和通信技术 (ICT) 已经发展成为克服这些与信息传递相关的问题的有前途的方法。我们在乌干达东部的小规模玉米农民中进行的田间试验中评估了以 ICT 为中介的方法提供农业信息的有效性。该方法由三种互补技术组成：首先，我们研究了视频作为传递信息、传递知识、提高技术采用率、提高生产力和改善福祉。其次，我们量化了使用交互式语音响应 (IVR) 技术增强视频的额外影响，这是一种更受需求驱动的信息提供方法。第三，我们估计了提醒农民关键农艺实践和技术的时效性短消息服务 (SMS) 的额外影响。我们发现视频在传递信息方面是有效的，与没有观看过有关如何成为更好的玉米农民的短视频的家庭在知识测试中的表现明显更好，应用了更多推荐的做法，并更有效地使用了投入看这个视频。这些家庭还报告称，玉米产量比未观看视频的家庭高出约 10%。然而，