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Piloting the Distribution of Stress-tolerant Seeds to Agro-dealers

IND -25 -2995

Last modified on December 19th, 2025 at 10:42 am

    Basic Information

  • Abstract
    Climate change is increasing smallholder exposure to weather shocks, which makes scalable delivery of climate-adaptation technologies a policy priority. Input suppliers, who are farmers’ trusted source of information, often lack incentives to introduce new technologies rapidly, or they avoid taking this risk, without intervention. Building on a study (Dar et al., 2024), which found over 50% higher adoption rates from in-person free trial-seed delivery to private agro-dealers when compared to spreading information from government agents to farmers, our objective was to refine a free trial-seed distribution model to use fewer in-person components than Dar et al. used, so that policymakers can facilitate seed distribution at scale using existing seed distribution logistics.

    Building on work in a pilot in Rabi 2024, PxD partnered with Krushisharang, a private seed company in Gujarat, to pilot low-cost approaches to distributing free trial-seed bags for a high-yielding groundnut variety resistant to pests and diseases, Girnar 4, in Kharif 2025. We randomized 12 blocks into three groups that varied the delivery models of free trial-seed bags to local agro-dealers: (1) direct delivery with implementer-led recruitment of local recipient dealers; (2) collection-based hub-and-spoke distribution via the distributor-affiliated dealer, also with implementer-led recruitment; and (3) dealer-directed distribution at the affiliated dealer’s discretion. Results indicate that implementer-led recruitment (direct-delivery and hub-and-spoke models) achieved full or near-full distribution to targeted agro-dealers. By contrast, dealer-directed distribution produced minimal reach beyond distributor-affiliated dealers.
  • Status
    Completed
  • Start date
    Q2 Apr 2025
  • Experiment Location
    Gujarat, India
  • Partner Organization
    Krushisharang Agriclinic Pvt. Ltd. & Fule Seeds
  • Agricultural season
    Kharif

    • Research Design

  • Experiment type
    Other
  • Sample frame / target population
    Krushisharang-affiliated agrodealers and agrodealers listed on publicly available rosters
  • Sample size
    48
  • Outcome type
    Input adoption
  • Mode of data collection
    Phone survey
  • Research question(s)
    1. Does implementer-led versus dealer-led recruitment of agro-dealers affect the reach and completeness of free trial-seed bag distribution to intended agro-dealer recipients?
    2. Does centralizing delivery through Krushisharang-affiliated dealers (hub-and-spoke model) improve the reach and completeness of seed bag distribution to intended agro-dealer recipients, compared to direct delivery to individual agro-dealers?
    3. Can leveraging existing relationships among agro-dealers (dealer-directed model) increase the reach and completeness of seed bag distribution to intended agro-dealer recipients?
  • Research theme
    Input markets, Input recommendations, Service design
  • Research Design

    Sample frame and selection criteria:
    We selected 12 groundnut-growing blocks that had active Krushisharang-affiliated dealers.
    For each block, we recruited three additional agro-dealers by randomly sorting agro-dealers from publicly available rosters and closing recruitment once we successfully recruited three agro-dealers.

    Randomization protocol:
    We randomly assigned the 12 blocks in equal numbers to one of three treatment groups (four blocks per group):
    Group 1: Direct delivery model.
    Group 2: Hub-and-spoke model.
    Group 3: Krushisharang-dealer-directed model.
    We randomized at the block level, stratified by whether the Krushisharang-registered agro-dealer in the block had received a free trial-seed bag during the previous Rabi 2024 pilot.

    Intervention details:
    Group 1—Direct-delivery model: Krushisharang’s transport service directly delivered bags to all four agro-dealers in each block (one Krushisharang-affiliated dealer and three recruited agro-dealers).
    Group 2—Hub-and-spoke model: Krushisharang’s transport service delivered all four bags per block to the Krushisharang-affiliated dealer; we asked this dealer to retain one bag and distribute the remaining three to the recruited agro-dealers in the block; we facilitated these linkages.
    Group 3—Dealer-directed model: Krushisharang’s transport service delivered all four bags per block to the Krushisharang-affiliated dealer; we asked this dealer to retain one bag, independently select three agro-dealers in their block, and deliver the remaining bags to these selected agro-dealers.

    Data collection and measurement:
    We conducted phone surveys to track the delivery to the intended agro-dealers.

    For more information on underlying evidence for this study, see Dar et al. (2024) or the working paper version.

    • Results

  • Results
    Group 1—Direct delivery model: All 16 agro-dealers (four Krushisharang-affiliated and 12 recruited) successfully received the free trial-seed bags.

    Group 2—Hub-and-spoke model: All 16 seed bags were successfully delivered to the four Krushisharang-affiliated dealers in this group (four bags per dealer). Of the 12 recruited agro-dealers, nine collected their trial-seed bags from their respective Krushisharang-affiliated dealers. Of the three who did not, two cited the long distance to the affiliated agro-dealer’s shop and one reported that the dealer was unavailable.

    Group 3—Krushisharang-dealer-directed model: All 16 seed bags were successfully delivered to the four Krushisharang-affiliated dealers. Only two affiliated dealers in this group had distributed any trial-seed bags by the end of the pilot in June 2025; in both cases, the recipients were farmers instead of other agro-dealers. One affiliated dealer distributed a single bag to one farmer, and the other distributed one bag each to two farmers. None of the seed bags in this group reached non-affiliated agro-dealers.

    Summary: Implementer-led recruitment of recipients (Groups 1 and 2) enabled broader and more reliable distribution to intended agro-dealer recipients compared to the relationship-based approach in Group 3. Direct delivery achieved full coverage in all four blocks, while the hub-and-spoke model achieved partial coverage in some blocks. Given the small number of randomized clusters, the differences between these two implementer-led models are suggestive but not statistically significant.

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