Farmers' preferences for climate-smart cowpea varieties: implications for crop breeding programmes

Despite sustained efforts to promote climate-smart technologies in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), adoption remains low. At the same time, the downside risks associated with climate change and food insecurity are becoming acute. Improved cowpea varieties are climate-smart and contribute to food and nutrition security. Limited evidence exists, however, regarding how cowpea attributes influence adoption. We use a discrete choice experiment to investigate farmers' preferences and mean willingness to pay (WTP) for cowpea variety attributes. Our results show that farmers' decision to adopt improved cowpea varieties increases in response to the following attributes: higher yields, early maturity, and white seed coat colour. The results indicate that 86% of the sampled farmers prefer climate-smart cowpea. Secondly, while we observe a wide dispersion of WTP among female cowpea farmers relative to male cowpea farmers, participation in cowpea training reduces the dispersion of WTP for both men and women. Moreover, controlling for farmer risk aversion further decreases the dispersion of WTP for all respondents. Our experiment reemphasizes the need for crop breeding programmes to be participatory. Moreover, such programmes would do well to satisfy the demands of different segments of the population based on risk, gender, and geographical characteristics.