Three weeks before wheat sowing: converting a contested demonstration into behaviour change
Your block has 1,850 wheat-growing households, 62% of them farming less than 2 ha. Last rabi a frontline demonstration programme compared a newly released variety with farmers' local seed on 40 plots; the 12 plots harvested under your supervision averaged 5.4 t/ha against 4.3 t/ha in neighbouring fields sown with local seed. Sowing begins in three weeks. You have Rs 40,000 for the whole campaign, one vacant field-assistant post, and a WhatsApp group of about 600 farmers. Records show that last season 30% of sampled farmers skipped seed treatment and 45% sowed after 20 November. One influential farmer, who harvested 6.2 t/ha from his own local variety, has told two village meetings that the demonstration yields were 'arranged' and that the new seed is costly and useless. The block agriculture officer wants a written plan by Friday.
1. Design the three-week campaign and allocate the Rs 40,000. Justify the channel mix and the sequence, not just the activities.
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Diagnose first: the binding constraints are not 'awareness'. They are (i) a skipped input step (seed treatment), (ii) a timing behaviour (late sowing), and (iii) a credibility problem among influential farmers. A campaign aimed only at the third will not move the first two.
Sequence: week 1 = credibility and skill (small, high-contact events); weeks 2-3 = scale through the WhatsApp group and seed shops, when farmers are actually buying seed.
Indicative allocation:
- Rs 14,000: 200 mini-kits (5 kg) of treated seed of the new variety, targeted at late-sowing and non-treating households. Bundling treatment with the seed removes the step farmers skip.
- Rs 8,000: six field days at the three plots with the sharpest contrast (irrigated vs rainfed, timely vs late), each including a live seed-drill calibration and a 20-plant stand count.
- Rs 8,000: two trained youth at the cooperative for 10 days doing seed treatment and drill calibration on the spot, about 25 farmers a day. This buys skill, not just message.
- Rs 4,000: three timed voice/WhatsApp messages and posters at four seed shops.
- Rs 6,000: transport for the influential farmer and 10 women farmers to a neighbouring block's last-year demonstration - outside evidence is more persuasive than your own data.
Mass media cannot fix a calibration skill; demonstrations cannot reach 1,850 households in three weeks. The mix is deliberate.
2. The influential farmer repeats his 'arranged yields' charge at a village meeting you attend. What do you verify before replying, and what exactly do you say?
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Verify before speaking: weighment slips, net plot size and harvest dates for the 12 supervised plots; whether his 6.2 t/ha came from a different sowing date, seed rate or irrigation regime; and whether the demonstration plots were sited on better land than his. If a plot size or weighment is wrong, correct it publicly and first - credibility is the only asset the programme has.
Then reply by reframing, not by contradicting:
- Accept his number as real - 6.2 t/ha is above the demonstration mean, so the message is not 'our variety beats you'.
- Put both results on a per-day and per-rupee basis, and ask what he did differently. The answer is usually early sowing and better management, which is the actual recommendation.
- Shift from variety-only to a package: treated seed + timely sowing + calibrated seed rate.
- Convert him into a co-tester: offer free seed of both the new variety and his own, in two strips on his own field next season, with him recording the harvest. A respected farmer who co-owns the trial stops being a critic.
Do not argue unverified numbers in public, and do not avoid him - an unresolved challenge spreads faster than the demonstration data.
3. Which two indicators would you record to judge the campaign, and why is 'area under the new variety' a weak indicator here?
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Indicators:
- Percentage of a random sample of 60 households sowing on or before 20 November, recorded from actual sowing dates, not from recall at the end of the season.
- Percentage of that sample whose seed was treated (and, secondary, whose drill was calibrated), verified by asking to see the treated seed lot or the operator's record.
Why not adoption area: it is a lagging indicator confounded by seed supply, rain and price; it cannot tell you whether the field days or the kits did the work; and free mini-kits inflate it - a farmer who accepts 5 kg has not adopted anything. It also gives no attribution, so you cannot defend the next budget.
Add two supporting measures if staff time allows: recall of the correct seed rate and sowing window (knowledge), and intention to treat seed next season (predicts behaviour). Report behaviour and knowledge separately; a campaign that raises knowledge but not sowing-date behaviour has failed on the constraint that mattered.