Experiment (select + to view abstract)	Abstract	Start date	Location	Partner_organization	Research tags	Status	Agricultural_season	Experiment Type
Blast Experiments: Names, Active Language, Proverbs, & Quiz Scores	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. PAD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS. During the long rainy season 2019 (LR 2019), we sent regular push messages to OAF farmers encouraging them to access the Fall Armyworm (FAW) components of the MoA-INFO platform, namely the FAW menu of informational topics, the FAW monitoring tool, and the FAW misconception quiz. While sending these messages in the "OAF Kenya Fall Armyworm 2019" trial, we implemented a series of four A/B tests we called “Blast Experiments” to test the effects of message design tweaks on farmer access to the FAW components of the MoA-INFO platform. 1. Names: We tested the effect of including users’ first names in invitation messages on farmers’ access to the FAW components. The intervention increased access to both the FAW menu and the FAW misconception quiz by 3 percentage points (pp) over 19% in the control group, but did not have a statistically significant effect on access to or completion of the FAW monitoring tool. 2. Active language: We tested the relative effects of language, with active "now" framing compared to "at any time" framing, on farmer access to the FAW components. Using “send MENU… now” messages increased access to the menu by 3 pp over the 12% access rate of the “send MENU… at any time” messages. 3. Proverbs: We tested the effect of including one of various Swahili proverbs at the beginning or at the end of an invitation message on farmer access to the FAW components. Inserting a Swahili proverb at the start of an invitation message increased access to the FAW menu, but had no effect when the same proverb was placed at the end of the message. 4. Quiz scores: We tested the effect of including farmers’ prior best FAW-quiz score in invitation messages on their access to the FAW misconception quiz. The intervention increased access rates by 11 pp over 57% in the control group, which indicates that performance-based framing can meaningfully boost re-engagement.		Kenya	Kenya Ministry of Agriculture, One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology	Completed	Long Rains	A/B test
The Influence of Bayer-branded GeoPotato Alerts on Farmers’ Behavior and Perceptions	PAD and mPower partnered with Bayer, a commercial input supplier, to test branded SMS alerts in the GeoPotato advisory service provided to potato farmers in Bangladesh. The partnership aimed to explore sustainable models for delivering digital advisory services, by testing how branded content affects farmers’ behavior and perceptions. This trial assessed whether Bayer-branded GeoPotato alerts influence farmers’ recognition of the brand, use of fungicide, and trust in the GeoPotato service, as well as farmers’ willingness to adopt recommendations. Farmers were randomly assigned to receive either standard alerts or alerts that included Bayer branding. The study measured outcomes related to brand recall, fungicide use, and trust in the service. Branded messages led to an 18% increase in the use of Bayer products, without undermining farmers’ trust in the GeoPotato service or their willingness to adopt its recommendations. However, the branded alerts did not have a significant impact on farmers’ ability to recall the Bayer brand or recognize its products. These findings support the potential of NGO partnerships with commercial input suppliers to sustain digital advisory services while boosting their product-uptake.	2018	Bangladesh	mPower	Extension agents, Input markets, Social learning	Completed	_N/A	A/B test
Motivational Messages for Extension Workers in Rwanda Tree Program 2022	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. During the 2022A agricultural season, OAF and PAD collaborated on a digital messaging project that targeted volunteer extension agents known as farmer promoters (FPs) in Rwanda “Motivational Messages for Extension Workers in Rwanda Tree Program 2018”. We examined whether SMS messages could improve FP performance, using two approaches: goal reminders, and personality-tailored motivational messages. Using a randomized controlled trial with 10,187 FP volunteer extension workers, we found that goal reminders sent during the regular working period increased a productivity index by 0.08 standard deviations, while reminders sent late had no effect. By contrast, personality-tailored motivational messages showed no performance improvements. These results suggest that workers who set ambitious yet realistic goals are more likely to respond to reminders and increase productivity, which is consistent with prior evidence on externally set goals. Given the extremely low cost of sending SMS reminders (US$0.005 per message sent), digital goal reminders can be a highly cost-effective way to strengthen extension services.	2021	Rwanda	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology, Extension agents, Input recommendations, Message framing	Completed	Season A	Impact Evaluation
MoA-INFO LR 2021 Registration: Crops First or Names First?	PAD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS. In this A/B test, we tested whether a redesigned registration process inviting users to opt-in to the crop advisory message series first, before asking registration questions, increased farmers’ registration completion and platform-engagement behavior. The treatment group received crop opt-in messages first; the control group received name registration messages first. Compared with the control group, the treatment group had a higher rate of crop series opt-ins but provided less profile information (e.g., name, location) and engaged slightly less with the platform after registration. Overall, switching the registration order improved specific registration metrics but reduced others, which indicates that there are trade-offs in registration design choices.	2021	Kenya	Kenya Ministry of Agriculture	Message framing	Completed	Long Rains	A/B test
Kenya Early Discounted Bundle Trial	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. We conducted an Early Discounted Bundle (EDB) trial with OAF in Kenya during the 2021 long rainy season to test whether digital interventions alone could replicate the input adoption effects found by Duflo et al. (2011), particularly in contexts where farmers already have high familiarity with recommended inputs. The intervention targeted past OAF Duka shop clients and former core program members with an SMS campaign promoting hybrid maize seeds combined with fertilizers (DAP or CAN); the campaign offered time-limited digital discount coupons for bundled purchases shortly after the 2020 short rainy season harvest. A bundled input package is designed to ensure that farmers purchase the three complementary inputs in appropriate quantities for their land size. While the trial did not increase actual bundle sales, it significantly boosted individual farmers’ input purchases and Duka shop engagement (they were 11.5–16.4% more likely to visit the shops) and moved purchase timing 2–6 days earlier. Treatment effects were strongest for maize hybrid seeds (16.2–19.1% increase) and DAP planting fertilizer (15.7–18% increase). We compared these findings to OAF's other existing discount program, Super Saver Discount (SSD), and found that in-person promotional strategies achieved higher bundle uptake than the digital-only approach. This finding suggests that, while digital-only campaigns are more cost-effective, in-person extension plays an important role in closing the adoption gap.	2021	Kenya	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology, Input recommendations, Message framing	Completed	Long Rains	Impact Evaluation
Kenya Planting Dates Trial	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. Planting at the optimal time has the potential to increase a farmer’s yield, especially for late planters, who plant after the optimal date. This trial tested whether sending farmers an SMS message prompting them to plant at the optimal time increases their likelihood of planting at this time. We also tested whether sending an additional SMS message with a personal endorsement from a trusted source and/or addressing farmers’ misconceptions about the optimal planting times increases the effectiveness of the basic SMS message. Sending farmers planting date recommendations via SMS brings their planting dates closer, on average, to the optimal date. The effect is higher for late planters; late planters in the treatment groups planted on average four days closer to the optimal date compared to late planters in the control group. While we do not find significant effects on the proportion of farmers who planted in the optimal time window, we do find some evidence that the intervention increases the likelihood of late planters planting within five days of the optimal date. Additional SMS messages intended to boost effectiveness of the basic message did not have the intended effect. We do not find any presence of spillover effects.	2021	Kenya	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Agricultural management advice	Completed	Long Rains	Impact Evaluation
Changing the Frequency of Advisory Calls to Improve Farmer Engagement	PxD has operated the Krishi Tarang service in Gujarat since 2016 to provide free agriculture information via mobile phones using a two-way Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform with "outbound" push calls and an "inbound" hotline service. We tested whether changing the frequency of advisory calls to farmers improves overall farmer engagement. Farmers were randomly assigned to receive standard weekly calls, or twice-weekly shorter calls, or to select their preferred frequency. The results suggest that both higher frequency and preference-based approaches increased listening rates, with stronger effects observed when farmers could choose their call frequency.	2017	Gujarat, India	J-PAL	Message timing and frequency	Completed	Kharif	A/B test
Kenya Agricultural Lime Experience Trial 2017	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. Soil acidity is a major issue for many of OAF's clients. Under a critical threshold (pH < 5.5), soil acidity negatively affects maize growth and can inhibit the efficacy of OAF products, such as fertilizer and hybrid seeds. Soil acidity can be resolved by the application of agricultural lime. Agricultural trials run by OAF indicate that spot applying (microdosing) lime increases yields significantly. These spot applications are the application of lime directly to the soil around the roots of maize plants. Despite the high return on and relatively low cost of purchasing lime, adoption of lime has been low. This trial implemented a series of interventions to test whether Field Officers (FOs) and OAF’s clients gaining experience with lime increases the likelihood of farmers purchasing lime the following season. We find that monetary incentives for FOs were highly effective in increasing lime adoption by farmers. However, receiving free lime decreased the likelihood of farmers adopting lime in the subsequent year, possibly because farmers were expecting lime to be free again.	2016	Kenya	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Agricultural management advice, Input recommendations, Service design	Completed	Long Rains	Impact Evaluation
Kenya Agricultural Lime Messaging Trial 2017	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. Prior to 2016, less than 3% of OAF clients in Western Kenya purchased agricultural lime from OAF. To increase take-up, OAF designed a phone-based extension pilot that consisted of six rounds of text messages targeting clients who had signed up for the OAF package during the previous season in a selected district of Western Kenya. The objective of the experiment was to evaluate the impact of SMS messages on lime adoption by farmers. The study tested whether more detailed, locally customized messages—containing site-specific information about soil acidity, lime dosage, total cost, and expected yield gains—would lead to higher adoption compared to simpler, generic messages. We tested this hypothesis by randomizing two different formats for SMS messages sent to farmers in a selected district of western Kenya, starting in 2016 to lead up to the period when farmers had to decide whether to request inputs from OAF for the long rainy season 2017. A control group of farmers received no messages. The SMS messages significantly increased lime adoption by over 3 percentage points (pp), which is a 30% increase relative to the 10% control mean. Customized messages produced slightly higher effects than general messages. Adoption patterns were consistent across administrative and phone survey data.	2016	Kenya	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Message framing, Social learning	Completed	Long Rains	Impact Evaluation
Differently Framed Blast Messages to Re-engage Sleeper Users	PxD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS. As of April 2019, some 135,000 (37%) of the MoA-INFO platform users had sent only one message to the platform (either "FARM" or "SHAMBA", to register on the platform) and had then never responded to any MoA-INFO messages. In the 30 days before the experiment, 58% of registered platform users had not sent any messages to the platform. We call these users, who complete the registration survey but never send any more messages to the platform, “sleepers”. PxD tested whether five messages framed in various ways re-engaged sleepers with the platform content. Compared to the four other messages, the message that directly showed the menu, to make it easy for the user to select content, resulted in a statistically significant higher response rate and prompted twice the number of users to access the content.	2019	Kenya	Kenya Ministry of Agriculture	Communication technology, Message framing	Completed	Long Rains	A/B test
Targeted Messages to Promote Flood-tolerant Seeds	PxD operates Ama Krushi, a free agriculture information service delivered over mobile phones, in collaboration with the State Government of Odisha Department of Agriculture using a two-way Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform with "outbound" push calls and an "inbound" hotline service. There is strong prior evidence that flood-tolerant (FT) rice varieties—Swarna Sub-1 and CR 1009 Sub-1—improve productivity by reducing crop losses during floods. Despite their proven ability to increase rice yields in flood-affected years, adoption of these varieties remains low. PxD tested whether a short, targeted Ama Krushi advisory message about the benefits of FT seeds would increase their adoption. At the start of the 2020 Kharif season, roughly 10,000 Ama Krushi users in three lowland districts were randomly assigned to receive either the regular weekly seed advisory, which provided information on several locally appropriate seed varieties (control group) or the same weekly advisory with additional messages highlighting the benefits of the FT seeds for two consecutive weeks (treatment group). However, at implementation a substantial proportion of farmers with low and medium land types in the treatment group received only the additional messages focused on FT seeds. We found in the follow-up phone survey that sending the additional messages focused on FT seeds significantly increased the reported use of FT seeds; the effect was primarily driven by farmers with low and medium land types. This test builds on PxD’s existing body of evidence showing that simple, engaging messages can be effective in promoting behavioral change among farmers.	2020	India, Odisha, India	Government of Odisha	Agricultural management advice, Communication technology, Message framing, Weather information	Completed	Kharif	A/B test
The Effect of Message Phrasing and Timing on the Use of the Fall Armyworm Monitoring Tool	PxD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS. The Fall Armyworm (FAW) monitoring tool helps farmers assess FAW damage in their fields and provides tailored advice based on their observations. Farmers can access the tool by texting the word “CHECK” (“ANGALIA” in Swahili). As of July 2019, 22% of platform users accessed the FAW monitoring tool but less than 9% of those users completed using the tool. This A/B test tested whether variations in message phrasing and messaging time of day affected the uptake and completed use of the monitoring tool. Farmers were randomly assigned to receive either a regular invitation message that required them to go through multiple interactions to launch the monitoring tool, or an easy version that allowed farmers to launch the tool in one step. Message delivery time was also randomized across four time slots: 7AM, midday, 3PM, and 6PM. The easy message led to a 2 percentage point (pp) higher response rate and a significantly higher completion rate than the regular message did. Messages sent at 6PM yielded the highest tool access rate, while midday messages, despite a lower response, resulted in the highest completion rate. These findings inform best practices for driving engagement with interactive advisory tools via SMS.	2019	Kenya	Kenya Ministry of Agriculture	Message framing, Message timing and frequency	Completed	Long Rains	A/B test
The Effect of Narrator’s Gender on the Rates of Engagement by UCAT Farmers	PxD is partnering with Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (HRNS) and TechnoServe (TNS) on the Uganda Coffee Agronomy Training (UCAT) program to provide a complementary digital service by reinforcing recommendations of Good Agricultural Practices via automated calls to subsets of coffee farmers. We tested whether the gender of the narrator for Interactive Voice Response (IVR) agronomy messages affected farmer engagement. In one group the narrator's gender was switched to match that of the farmer’s, while in the other group the narrator's gender was switched to the opposite of the farmer’s. Overall, both male and female farmers increased engagement when switching from a male to female narrator, but not when switching from a female to male narrator. Our analysis also suggests—although only tentatively—that women presented a stronger response than men.	2020	Uganda	IFPRI, UCAT	Message narration	Completed	Short Rains	A/B test
Approaches to Asking Users for Their Location Information	PxD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS. Kenya’s 2010 Constitution replaced the former provincial and district administrative structures with a devolved system of 47 counties. PxD therefore tested four different approaches to asking platform users for their location information. We tested whether the approach affected the response rate of users and the corroboration of responses with known administrative boundaries. Asking about counties yielded higher response rates and corroboration rates than asking about districts. Using filtered lists classified more data, albeit at a slightly lower corroboration rate, than unfiltered text responses did. Lastly, increasing the number of location questions reduced the overall data quality, which suggests that collecting more granular administrative data has diminishing returns.	2018	Kenya	Kenya Ministry of Agriculture	Message framing, Service design	Completed	Short Rains	A/B test
The Effect of a Language Preference Question on Quiz Scores	PxD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS. To recruit farmers to the service, PxD worked with Safaricom (a large Kenyan phone company) to send SMS messages to owners of mobile phones in rural areas; the messages had a keyword in English or Swahili (“FARM” or “SHAMBA”) that farmers could use to register. Farmers who texted the keyword to the MoA-INFO shortcode were sent a registration survey. This experiment builds on a language prompt experiment (ID: 1395), which tested whether offering users the option to switch languages affected registration, retention, and engagement with the MoA-INFO platform. That study found increased initial completion rates when users could choose their preferred language, but it did not find a sustained impact on engagement. This A/B test aimed to measure whether asking farmers about their preferred language affects their comprehension of the information in the registration survey content, as measured by their performance on a comprehension quiz. Farmers who had been sent a registration survey were randomly assigned to the treatment group, who received an SMS asking them which language they preferred, or the control group, who did not receive the language preference question. Approximately one thousand farmers were randomly selected to receive an SMS invitation to take a quiz to test their knowledge about Fall armyworm (FAW). This randomization was stratified by treatment status if the user had been offered the opportunity to switch languages in the registration survey, and language of registration message (English or Swahili), resulting in four groups of equal size ~250. Users who were given the option to switch languages scored slightly higher on the quiz when scoring only the questions for which they provided a response. The treatment had a slightly negative effect on quiz scores calculated by the number of correct responses out of all questions, whether or not farmers provided a response. These results are not statistically significant and the findings do not provide supporting evidence that the opportunity to switch languages has a positive effect on the FAW comprehension quiz scores.	2018	Kenya	Kenya Ministry of Agriculture	Communication technology, Message narration	Completed	Short Rains	A/B test
Framing of Location Requests	PxD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS. Farmer's location information can improve the targeting and relevance of advisory messages, but collecting accurate location information using SMS messages has been a challenge. PxD tested whether different framings of a location request would affect farmers’ likelihood to respond. Two randomly selected groups of farmers were sent messages asking their location. One message was framed in terms of improving recommendations and the other message was framed in terms of fighting Fall Armyworm (FAW). The response rate was measured for both groups and was found to be significantly lower with the FAW framing.	2018	Kenya	Kenya Ministry of Agriculture	Communication technology, Message framing, Service design	Completed	Short Rains	A/B test
Menu Access Rates for Different Menu Reminder Messages	PxD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS. PxD tested whether reminder messages—either general or content-specific—increase menu access rates, and which reminder message generates the most interest. A randomly selected group of platform users was sent a reminder with general or content-specific messages to access the menu. Farmers who received the messages were between 2 and 6 percentage points (pp) more likely to access the menu, with the message about the origins of Fall Armyworm (FAW) increasing the likelihood the most.	2018	Kenya	Kenya Ministry of Agriculture	Communication technology, Message timing and frequency	Completed	Long Rains	A/B test
The Effect of a Language Prompt on Farmers’ Platform Engagement	PxD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS. To recruit farmers to the service, PxD worked with Safaricom (a large Kenyan phone company) to send SMS messages to owners of mobile phones in rural areas, with a keyword in English and Swahili (“FARM” or “SHAMBA”) that they could use to register their phone number. Farmers who texted the keyword to the MoA-INFO platform were sent a registration survey. Safaricom sent messages in the language that users chose for the keyword to register their phone number. We tested whether giving users the option to switch languages affects the likelihoods of their registration on, retention in, and engagement with the system. When given the chance, 22% of users chose a different language from their keyword language. Having the option to switch the language increased the probability of completing the registration survey on the first day, but did not lead to a sustained increase in engagement.	2018	Kenya	Kenya Ministry of Agriculture	Communication technology, Message narration	Completed	Long Rains	A/B test
The Effect of an SMS Rating Survey on Platform Engagement and Practice Awareness	PxD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS. Farmers are provided with four menu options: Pesticides, Managing Fall Armyworm (FAW), Detecting FAW, and FAW Origins and Lifecycle. Upon selecting a specific topic area, a farmer has a 25% chance of being asked to take a satisfaction survey via SMS. The survey asks the farmer to rate how useful the MoA-INFO platform is and if the farmer plans to follow the recommendations. Receiving the rating survey decreased the opt-out rate by 1.4 percentage points (pp) and decreased access to additional menu topics immediately following the survey by 6.1 pp. The pesticides menu had the highest average rating but the lowest likelihood of the recommendations being followed; the managing-FAW menu had the lowest average rating but the highest likelihood of the recommendations being followed.	2018	Kenya	Kenya Ministry of Agriculture	Communication technology	Completed	Short Rains	A/B test
Kenya Fall Armyworm Trial 2019	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. PAD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS. In this project PAD and OAF provided information on Fall Armyworm (FAW) to OAF farmers via SMS. OAF invited its members to access information about FAW on PAD’s two-way MoA-INFO SMS platform. The OAF farmers who registered on the platform were randomly assigned to receive different volumes and types of messages. OAF conducted a follow-up phone survey after the farming season, which allowed us to quantify the effects of the service on farmer knowledge and practices. Treatment-group farmers who received push messages and reminders about the platform were 125% more likely to access the FAW menu compared to control-group farmers. Farmers’ knowledge about FAW was positively associated with the SMS service, although this effect was not statistically significant in most cases. Knowledge improvements were significant for some topics that control farmers understood at low levels. Similarly, the SMS intervention had (mostly insignificant) positive effects on farmers’ adoption of recommended practices. The probabilities of treatment farmers sharing the information with and recommending the platform to other group members were high.	2019	Kenya	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology, Pest management	Completed	Long Rains	Other
Rwanda Soil Health Trial 2020	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. This trial tested whether variation in SMS messages within farmer groups affected the adoption of recommended soil health inputs, including agricultural lime and fertilizer, by OAF farmers in Rwanda. Farmers from diverse-message groups received messages that were different from the messages received by their group members; farmers from same-message groups received the same messages as their group members did. We find that farmers from diverse-message groups were marginally less likely than farmers in same-message groups to order lime, although the difference was very small and only marginally significant after we accounted for multiple hypothesis testing. Groups that received diverse messages were no more likely to adopt fertilizer. We do not find differences in outcomes across the four message framings that we tested. These findings offer a counterpoint to earlier suggestive evidence from similar SMS trials in Rwanda (for example, the "2018 Rwanda Lime Trial"), which showed positive effects of message diversity within farmer groups.	2019	Rwanda	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology, Message framing	Completed	Season B	A/B test
Rwanda Soil Health Trial 2019	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. We evaluated the effects of an SMS campaign in Rwanda that encouraged farmers to adopt recommended soil health inputs, particularly agricultural lime. We first randomized whether individuals in a farmer group received identical messages, diverse messages, or no messages. In the groups that were assigned to receive messages, we randomized individual farmers to receive no message, two messages, or four messages in a six-day time window. We find that the SMS campaign increased lime adoption by 12% overall but did not significantly affect fertilizer use. Groups that received diverse messages saw higher lime adoption, but this difference is not statistically significant. We find that farmers who received four SMS messages were more likely to adopt recommended inputs than those who received only two messages.	2018	Rwanda	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology, Message framing, Message timing and frequency	Completed	Season A	Impact Evaluation
Kenya Repayment Trial 2019	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. OAF regularly tests different solutions to improve repayments. One such approach is outreach by call-center field officers (FOs) to struggling farmers and their group leaders (GLs), reminding them of the group-liability structure. This outreach encourages the farmers to make a payment to get back on a healthy repayment path. An important aspect of the calls is asking farmers if they would like to pledge to pay a certain amount by the end of the following week. On average, about half of the farmers make a pledge, and OAF shares this information with FOs, who can then follow up and enforce this informal commitment device. In the previous year OAF ran a “Kenya Repayment 2018 trial” to test the effect of FO calls to farmers; this trial found suggestive but statistically insignificant results that calls are effective at increasing repayment. In the 2019 long rainy season, we ran another trial in Kenya to test this intervention. In this second trial, we find that calls to farmers had no effect on overall repayment rates.	2019	Kenya	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology	Completed	Long Rains	Impact Evaluation
Kenya Down Payment Trial 2019	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. In this trial, OAF and PAD ran an experiment to test whether varying message content could improve an SMS program designed to nudge farmers to complete the OAF down payment by the deadline. We hypothesized that using diverse content and framings will increase the chances of reaching a farmer with a message that they find persuasive, and that sending different messages tailored to the times in the prepayment period will be particularly effective. To test this, we selected promising message styles from the previous year’s trial “Kenya Down Payment Trial 2018”. Farmers were divided into a control group, which received the same, randomly-assigned message three times, and a treatment group, which received all three messages in random order. We do not find a statistically significant difference in the likelihood of completing the down payment between farmers who were sent the same message and farmers who were sent different messages. In a context where farmers receive messages that are different from the messages of their fellow group members, there may be little or no additional benefit in sending varied messages to individual farmers.	2018	Kenya	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology, Message framing, Message timing and frequency	Completed	Long Rains	A/B test
Kenya Repayment Trial 2018	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. OAF's credit program requires all group members to complete repayments to qualify for the loan in the following season. A simple model of group-liability lending suggests that informing members about the group’s progress toward repayment either spurs or reduces individual repayment. In a block randomized controlled trial with nearly 300,000 OAF members, we tested how SMS message reminders about the repayment status of the individual and the group affect the farmers’ loan repayment performance. We find that the effects of SMS message reminders about repayment status are heterogeneous. Reminding borrowers about their own repayment status increased the probability of on-time repayment; informing borrowers who had paid off their loans early about their group’s repayment status had, on average, a small but significant adverse effect on the repayment performance of their group members. These findings suggest that peer monitoring in groups may backfire in underperforming groups, by lowering the individual's incentive to repay, and that individual messages are more effective in promoting timely repayment.	2018	Kenya	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology, Message framing	Completed	Long Rains	A/B test
Rwanda Agricultural Lime Trial 2018	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. In this experiment we examined the effects of an SMS campaign that promoted the adoption of agricultural lime (a relatively new input) by Rwandan farmers, in a group-based credit and extension program. The campaign sent messages to farmers organized in groups, and we experimentally varied the message diversity and intensity, as well as the message content, framing, and repetition. On average, receiving SMS messages increased the farmer’s likelihood of purchasing lime through the program by 20% over the adoption rate of 3.4% in the control group. The SMS campaign also had a small and marginally significant effect on the likelihood of lime adoption by farmers who do not own phones; this effect suggests the presence of spillover effects. Further analysis provides tentative evidence that sending diverse messages, instead of identical messages, to farmers within a group is more effective in increasing the likelihood of lime purchase. The overall treatment effect estimated for the full sample of phone owners and non-owners for groups that received diverse messages is twice as large as the estimate for those that received identical messages. An additional SMS encouraging farmers to share information had no spillover effect.	2017	Rwanda	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology, Message framing	Completed	Season A	A/B test
Kenya Down Payment Trial 2018	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. This trial focused on identifying SMS nudges that meaningfully increase the rates of qualification for the OAF program to receive inputs on credit. We examined early qualification, which happens when a farmer completes the down payment of 500 KES by an early date to qualify for the loan. Early down payment offers two key advantages: It helps cash-constrained farmers secure program qualification before the Christmas period, which has increased spending needs, and it extends the loan repayment timeline once farmers qualify, thus potentially improving their repayment rates. We tested multiple SMS messaging strategies to encourage farmers to complete the down payment by an early date. Sending SMS reminders significantly increases down payment rates, compared to not sending messages. We find no meaningful differences in the effectiveness of different message framings or timing.	2017	Kenya	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology, Message framing	Completed	Long Rains	A/B test
Motivational Messages for Extension Workers in Rwanda Tree Program 2018	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. Governments in low-income countries rely on embedded community agents to provide frontline services in sectors critical for development such as education, health and agriculture. Understanding how best to motivate these agents, in settings where oversight might be difficult, is critical to improving development outcomes for the communities they serve. OAF, in collaboration with PAD, conducted a field experiment to evaluate the effect of mobile phone-based motivational messages on the performance of agriculture extension agents in Rwanda.The extension agents were volunteer Farmer Promoters (FPs) at the village level, and paid socio-economic development officers (SEDOs) employed by the government at the cell level (administrative unit in Rwanda one level up from the village). Agents were tasked with mobilizing farmers for a nationwide tree-distribution agroforestry campaign that encouraged farmers to sign up to receive nursery trees and plant them on their farms. We implemented an SMS campaign to nudge agents to register farmers for the campaign and ensure that the farmers arrived on the tree distribution day. The experiment tested the relative effects of messaging FPs, messaging SEDOs, or messaging both the SEDO and FP, for the village in question. We identified the effects of the SMS nudges on FP performance by the share of their target number of farmers who arrived on tree-distribution day. We find that direct motivational messages to the FP village-level extension agents increased the farmer turnout for the campaign by 5 to 7 percentage points (pp) of the fraction of the target met over the control mean of 90%. Motivational messages sent to SEDO cell-level extension agents had no effect. Our findings demonstrate that non-financial motivational nudges aimed at frontline service-provider agents can improve program outcomes in developing country contexts. Our findings also highlight the promise of mobile phones to improve the delivery of agriculture extension services.	2018	Rwanda	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology, Extension agents, Message framing	Completed	Season A	Impact Evaluation
The Impact of Digital Extension Messages on the Prevention and Management of Fall Armyworm	Fall armyworm (FAW) is a pest that spread from the Americas to sub-Saharan Africa in 2016. It is a fast-reproducing species that causes substantial crop damage. PAD and the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) implemented an SMS campaign in four provinces (Southern, Luapula, Central, and Eastern) of Zambia using a digital platform managed by the Zambian Ministry of Agriculture to provide smallholder farmers with timely advice on how to prevent and manage FAW infestations throughout the 2019–2020 season. We evaluated the impact of delivering digital extension messages on FAW prevention and management via the Zambia Integrated Agricultural Management Information System (ZIAMIS) platform to farmers registered for Zambia’s Farmer Input Subsidy Program (FISP). Intervention messages covered FAW monitoring, cultural pest control practices, preventive methods, and correct use of pesticides and fertilizers. We used follow-up questions to evaluate farmers’ actions based on whether they spotted FAW and used pesticides. Results show that farmers in the treatment group had significantly higher scores on both FAW knowledge and recommended practice adoption indices. The estimated treatment effects do not vary significantly across gender or SMS use frequency.	2017	Zambia	CABI, Smart Zambia Institute, Zambia Ministry of Agriculture	Communication technology, Pest management	Completed	Rainy Season	Impact Evaluation
Messaging Approaches to Promote Nutritious Vegetables	One Acre Fund (OAF) is an agricultural service provider that provides support for smallholder farmers in Africa to access agricultural inputs, training, and markets, to help the farmers increase their harvests and income. PAD and OAF began collaborating in 2016 on efforts to increase adoption of agricultural inputs and improve OAF operations in Kenya and Rwanda. Micronutrient deficiencies are widespread in rural Kenya. According to the Kenya National Micronutrient Survey conducted in 2011, 83.3% of preschool-age children in rural areas suffered from zinc deficiency, and 26.3% from anemia. Deficiencies in key micronutrients like iron and zinc can hinder growth and cognitive function and are major contributors to child and maternal mortality in the developing world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. In partnership with OAF, we evaluate one approach to addressing this issue: an SMS campaign informing OAF farmers about the agronomic and nutritional benefits of zinc-fortified beans and nutritious vegetables. OAF offers the opportunity for farmers to buy these seed varieties on credit. We find that SMS messages increased adoption of zinc-fortified beans and recommended vegetables by 1.8 and 1.0 percentage points (pp), respectively. These increases constitute increases over the control group of 89.3% (control mean 2%) and 3.4% (control mean 29.2%) in each recommended input. Based on the cost of SMS dissemination at OAF, we estimate that the intervention increased adoption at a cost of $0.57 and $0.97 per additional farmer adopting zinc-fortified beans and recommended vegetables, respectively. Furthermore, we find significant differences in adoption outcomes between different message framings: Content that emphasized agronomic properties and yield-potential was particularly effective at encouraging bean adoption, while messaging that focused on preventing anemia was particularly effective at encouraging vegetable adoption. We also tested if varying messages, both over time and across neighboring farmers, could facilitate social learning and increase adoption, but we find no evidence that message variation increased adoption. Lastly, we explore heterogeneity by gender, and find that, while adoption of zinc-fortified beans was significantly higher among women in the control group, men increased their adoption more than women did as a result of the treatment; we do not find significant gender heterogeneity in vegetable adoption.	2019	Kenya	One Acre Fund (OAF)	Communication technology, Gender, Message framing, Message timing and frequency, Social learning	Completed	Long Rains	Impact Evaluation