Positive deviance: Uncovering superior farming practices in Tanzania

Originally posted on the RHoMIS blog.

Around the world, agricultural development organizations often struggle with surprisingly weak adoption of innovations that had previously been successful at other places. If all goes well, the smallholder farmers addressed by a development program readily adopt and adapt newly introduced practices, such as improved management of crops and livestock. Not so rarely, however, promising innovations do not fit with local culture, cause extra labour at times when the farmers are already extremely busy, or show other unexpected downsides in the new context.

Read an article on how the Rural Household Multiple-Indicator Survey (RHoMIS) was used to sample over 500 farming households from southern Tanzania to find the strongest performers.