Farmers' Behavior and Innovations' Adoption Processes in Rural Sahel: Case of Supplemental Irrigation from Farm Ponds in Burkina Faso

Since 2012, development actors havepromoted supplemental irrigation fromfarm ponds to cope with rainfall variabilityin Burkina Faso, but few farmers have adopted the innovation. Although harvesting runoff water in ponds is an old practice in Sahelian Burkina Faso,farmers were not accustomed to irrigatingcropswith stored rainwater. In thecontext oflow adoptionratesof innovation, it is usefulto understandthe behaviorand profile of those who do adoptinnovations. This article analyzes farmers' adoptionprocessesby focusing on their socio-economiccharacteristics andonstakeholders' social representationsof the innovation.We conductedfield surveys of 18 institutional actorsand 33 adopters. Our results showed that farmers have favorableattitudestowardsadoptionand thatinstitutional actorshelpstrengthenthese intentions by influencingfarmers' social norms and capacities to act,butthatthe farmers' perceptions of difficulties, risk, and social norms prevent them fromadopting.As supplemental irrigation from farm ponds is a labor-intensive innovation, farmers who cannot call on community labor or hire seasonal workers are limited in their adoption of the innovation. In addition, the fear of being subjected to mockery by members of the community or the fear of losing social prestige is a social norm that may limit the adoption of the innovation.We characterized the profile of adopters, who mainly have a low income but a high social status that allows them to receive support from policy-makers. Farmers have a preference for growing cash cropsrather than subsistence crops the latter being the goal of most institutional actors.Our study showed that farmers' preferences and perceptions of social norms,as well as the characteristics of innovations,are important as socio-economicand technical factors in farmers' adoption processes.