Harvesting the Rain: The Adoption of Environmental Technologies in the Sahel

Abstract Many agricultural and environmental technologies require upfront investments. This may deter adoption, particularly in settings characterized by information liquidity and credit constraints. We test for these barriers to the adoption of an agricultural technique that helps address land degradation in Niger. We find little evidence that liquidity or credit constraints deter adoption: instead, providing farmers with training increases the share of adopters by over 90 percentage points. Conditional or unconditional cash transfers have no additional effect. Adoption increases agricultural output and reduces land turnover in the longerterm. In our setting, training provides both specific technical knowledge and addresses behavioral constraints.