PRISE Pesticide Application Campaign SR 2020
KEN -20 -1526Last modified on December 19th, 2025 at 10:39 am
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Abstract
The Pest Risk Information Service (PRISE) is an early warning model, run by the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI), that predicts the optimal timing of pesticide application. PxD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS messages. CABI partnered with PxD to send SMS messages to maize, bean, and tomato farmers registered on the MoA-INFO service, to help the farmers make better decisions about pesticide application when confronted with pests in their fields.
Building on a 2019 pilot that provided maize farmers with optimal pesticide timing based on the PRISE model, CABI and PxD expanded the trial in 2020 to include three crop–pest combinations: maize and Fall armyworm (FAW), beans and bean fly, and tomatoes and tomato leafminer. Treatment farmers received targeted messages about optimal pesticide timing plus nudges to use specific MoA-INFO platform features (crop menus and the FAW monitoring tool). Control farmers received standard MoA-INFO cropping messages. We evaluate whether timely pesticide advice improves platform engagement and pest management practices, and we gathered farmer feedback on the PRISE model’s accuracy.
The PRISE informational messages significantly increased menu access by maize, bean, and tomato farmers, while also increasing their platform opt-out rates. A vast majority of farmers (more than 85%) reported that the PRISE model gave accurate estimations. However, farmers indicated that their lack of resources to buy the required inputs was a notable limitation to them acting on the recommendations. -
Status
Completed
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Start date
Q3 Sep 2020
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End date
Q1 Jan 2021
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Experiment Location
Kenya
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Partner Organization
CABI
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Agricultural season
Short Rains
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Experiment type
A/B test
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Sample frame / target population
Farmers from 189 constituencies who are late and very late planters and opted into maize, bean or tomato in MoA-INFO in the SR2020.
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Sample size
49,498
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Outcome type
Service engagement, Information access, Input adoption, Farming practices
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Mode of data collection
PxD administrative data, Phone survey
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Research question(s)
1. Do PRISE pest advisory messages increase farmers’ engagement with the MoA-INFO platform?
2. How do PRISE pest messages affect farmers’ pest management decisions? -
Research theme
Pest management
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Research Design
This trial was conducted during Kenya’s 2020 short rainy season (SR 2020) across all 189 constituencies with at least 30 late or very late planters who had opted-in to receive the cropping series (CS) SMS advisory for maize, beans, or tomatoes from the MoA-INFO platform. Users could opt-in to the CS for a maximum of two crops at a time. Farmers were randomly assigned to the treatment or control groups. Farmers assigned to the treatment group for one crop were also assigned to the treatment group for any other crops they had opted-in to at the time of randomization. The crop-wise randomization order was maize first, followed by beans, then tomatoes.
Treatment group farmers received fortnightly SMS messages based on CABI’s PRISE model. The messages offered time-sensitive recommendations on optimal pesticide application tailored by crop, location, and planting date. The treatment group farmers were also encouraged to access relevant MoA-INFO platform menus—such as the FAW menu for maize, the bean fly menu, the tomato leafminer (Tuta absoluta) menu, and the FAW monitoring tool—by texting specific keywords (e.g., FAW, BEAN, TOMATO, CHECK). Control group farmers continued to receive standard CS messages without PRISE alerts or nudges to targeted platform tools.
Approximately 18,431 maize farmers and 10,000 farmers each for bean and tomato totalling 29,554 farmers were allocated to the treatment group and 19,872 farmers were in the control group. In each crop’s treatment group, 40% of farmers were late planters and 60% were very late planters, which reflected the distribution of the planting timelines of MoA-INFO users.
The outcomes for engagement with the MoA-INFO platform were: (1) opting-out of the CS, and (2) browsing the relevant MoA-INFO platform menus as recommended by the treatment messages. We measured the opt-out outcome as a dummy variable if a user opted-out at any point in the season over a 4-month period from September 29, 2020 to January 31, 2021. We measured menu browsing as a dummy variable if a user browsed the menu at least one time during the same period, and we counted the total number of times the user browsed during that period. Users could still browse menus by sending the keyword, even if they opted-out of receiving CS push messages.
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Results
The PRISE SR 2020 message intervention increased overall menu browsing during the season. This is consistent with the regular encouragement of treatment farmers to access the FAW, Bean, and Tomato menus, and the FAW monitoring tool, throughout the PRISE SMS campaign.
Treatment push messages increased farmers’ engagement with the individual crop menus both at the extensive margin (likelihood of having browsed the menu at least once: 1.2 percentage points (pp) for maize, 2.9 pp for bean, 3.6 pp for tomato) and at the intensive margin (number of times the menu was browsed: 7.1% more for maize, 20.5% more for bean, and 14.8% more for tomato).
The PRISE campaign also significantly increased the browsing by treatment-group farmers of specific submenus such as FAW (1.4 pp), bean fly (0.3 pp), tomato leafminer (0.8 pp), bean (2.9 pp), and tomato (5.1 pp), compared to control-group farmers. The PRISE campaign did not increase the accessing and completion of the FAW monitoring tool.
However, the SMS campaign significantly increased the CS opt-out rates of treatment farmers during the season, especially for maize at 2 pp and bean at 1.2 pp, and to a smaller extent for tomato at 0.8 pp; this could be due to SMS advisory fatigue.
The monitoring survey results revealed qualitative insights that cost was the main reason for farmers not applying recommended pesticides. Consistent with feedback received on pesticides, farmers reported taking minimal management actions, mainly because of their lack of resources to buy the required inputs.