Making decisions about agroecological innovations: perspectives from members of farmers’ organizations in Burkina Faso

ABSTRACT

There is a growing promotion of agroecological techniques in many Sub-Saharan African countries as a response to the current climatic variability challenges. In the case of Burkina Faso, a number of studies have mentioned the role of Farmers’ Organizations (FOs) in the promotion of agroecological techniques. Although previous studies have highlighted the role of FOs in agroecology, more detailed studies on the effectiveness of their intermediation activities and especially those focusing on the way the FOs influence farmers’ agroecological innovations decisions are still scarce. This study addresses this gap by providing the answer to the question of what drives farmers’ decisions to implement agroecological innovations and how their FOs influence these decisions. The results show that the implementation of agroecological innovations varies, with some farmers using many and others few of the innovations promoted by their respective FOs. Farmers’ implementation of these innovations is largely influenced by the actions of their FOs on at least one of the three drivers of individual motivation or innovation behavior (Vroom 1964): instrumentality, valence, and expectancy. Finally, the study calls for policy actors to increase funding support to FOs for widening their continuous provision of agroecology development activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Sahel
• systems perspective
• innovation brokers
• sustainable agriculture
• soil restoration

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Guy Faure and Laurens Klerkx for feedback and comments on earlier versions of the paper. All the participants to the study were informed about the purpose of the study and gave informed oral consent to participate in the study. All the interviewees participated on a voluntary basis and discussion was held (at the end the interviews) to share our understanding on what will be reported in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

The data collected and analyzed for this study can be shared upon request.

Notes

1 In this study, agroecological innovations are considered to be all types of agricultural techniques developed by integrating ecological principles, referred to here as agroecological techniques or ecologically-based techniques.

2 See Iyabano (2021) for more insights into the diversity of FOs involved in promoting agroecological innovations in Burkina Faso. See also Iyabano et al. (2021) for detailed explanations of some selected FOs’ development of agroecological innovations.

3 It is important to note that – except for AIDMR, which promoted only ecological agriculture – UNPCB and UGCPA are involved in promoting both conventional and ecological agriculture.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency of the European Commission under the Joint Doctorate Program Grant AGTRAIN agreement. The views expressed are those of the authors only and do not represent the formal position of the European Commission.