Photo: Petr Matous
By Petr Matous, and Örjan Bodin.
Small decisions of millions of farmers around the world, such as which cultivation practices they choose, have large implications for global food security and environmental sustainability. One practice that can have profound impacts on agricultural productivity, farmers’ livelihoods, and environmental footprint of food production is the application of fertilizers. To preserve soil health, nutrients need to be regularly replenished in agricultural land.
Farmers do not choose soil management practices in isolation. They may be influenced by experience and opinions of others. Working with an NGO that helps farmers adopt recommended practices, we wanted to see how different patterns of informal social networks of advice in farming villages may impact the adoption of fertilizers in a cocoa producing region of Sulawesi in Indonesia.
We found that in villages with one or a few farmers being significantly more known and connected than other community members, perhaps because they have been repeatedly engaged as “model farmers” in official demonstration programs, most of the village tends to adopt similar practice. Unfortunately, in our sample, the practice was to not use fertilizers.
Our study used social network and fertilizer data from 30 rural villages, but it resonates with past research of teams in corporate settings, which suggests that hub-and-spoke networks centralized around one individual, may suppress alternative perspectives from emerging.
Our simulations support similar mechanisms behind the observed patterns. In centralized villages, the dominant individual may become not only disproportionally influential, but their influence may suppress influence of others. Regardless of their potential influence, recent research shows that the dominant individuals are nonetheless limited in what they can effectively promote. This altogether suggest that programs engaging only with highly connected “model farmers” could backfire, leaving the uptake of desired practices low.
We thus call for caution when implementing programs that may skew community structures by elevating a small number of well-established farmers above others. Such individuals might not effectively support intended aims and, importantly, the programs can leave behind more centralized social fabric that may be less conducive to needed community adaption in the years to come.
Relational Thinking 