Fall Armyworm
ZAM -19 -1371Last modified on July 31st, 2025 at 2:00 am
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Abstract
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.
This experiment evaluated the impact of delivering digital extension messages on FAW prevention and management to farmers registered under Zambia’s Farmer Input Subsidy Program (FISP) via the ZIAMIS platform. Intervention messages covered FAW monitoring, cultural practices, preventive methods, and safe pesticide and fertilizer use. Follow-up questions were used 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. No significant treatment effect heterogeneity was found by gender or SMS usage frequency.
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Status
Completed
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Start date
Q4 Oct 2019
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Experiment Location
Zambia
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Partner Organization
CABI , Zambia Ministry of Agriculture , Smart Zambia Institute
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Agricultural season
Rainy Season
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Experiment type
Impact Evaluation
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Sample frame / target population
FISP-registered Farmers
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Sample size
3,028
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Outcome type
Crop / animal health or loss, Agricultural production / yield, Knowledge
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Mode of data collection
Phone survey
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Research question(s)/hypotheses
1. Does SMS advice on FAW improve farmers’ knowledge and nudge them to adopt the recommended practices?
2. Are there differential effects by gender of the message recipient? -
Research theme
Communication technology, Pest management
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Research design notes
From December 2019 to February 2020, a total of 39 messages were sent to 86,244 farmers in 106 treatment camps across four provinces (Central, Eastern, Southern, and Luapula). Messages covered monitoring practices, cultural and preventative FAW control methods, and correct pesticide and fertilizer use, and were delivered in Bemba, Nyanja, or Tonga languages, based on camp-level language assignments provided by the Ministry of Agriculture.
Camps were randomly assigned to either treatment (N = 105) or control (N = 68) group from a list of high-FAW-risk areas, stratified by province and camp size. In the treatment camps, we sent messages to all the farmers who were registered as FISP beneficiaries for the 2019-2020 agricultural season.
The survey sample included 3,028 FISP-registered farmers on the ZIAMIS platform who were reached via phone and consented to participate in the survey. We asked farmers a maximum of four questions on actions, depending on whether or not farmers spotted FAW and used pesticides. -
Results
We found that the intervention led to significant improvements in farmers’ knowledge of Fall Armyworm and their self-reported adoption of recommended management practices. Simple knowledge and action indices were constructed to capture the proportion of relevant questions each respondent answered correctly.
The treatment group had higher scores on both the knowledge quiz and action index (the share out of five questions answered correctly). Treatment farmers scored on average 1.75 percentage points higher on the knowledge quiz (68.25% compared to 66.50% in the control group). Similarly, treatment farmers scored 3.67 percentage points higher on the recommended actions index (82.27% compared to 78.6% in the control group). We found no heterogeneity in the gender of the farmer or in the frequency of SMS use.