Training farmers better starts with giving them less at once

On Bhola Island, a low-lying delta in southern Bangladesh, groundnut farmers work against a long list of threats: crop pests, unpredictable monsoons, disease outbreaks, and a long-standing dependence on chemical pesticides that can strain family budgets and the surrounding environment.

For more than a decade, those changes have made the island an important place of study for Virginia Tech researchers working to improve agricultural productivity, sustainability, and farmer livelihoods.

Nandini Das, who recently earned her Ph.D. in economics from the College of Science, spent three years studying how agricultural training shapes what farmers actually do in their fields. Her research, supported by the IPM Innovation Lab Associate Award from the USAID Bangladesh Mission — a project housed in the Center for International Research, Education, and Development — found something that may seem counterintuitive: Giving farmers more information does not always lead to better results.

In some cases, it can get in the way.

Das found that information overload could deter the adoption of profitable inputs. When a single training session requires farmers to absorb multiple new technologies at once in a setting where literacy constraints and limited follow-up support are common, the cognitive burden becomes too great. Farmers cannot act on what they cannot fully process.

Das’ work was supervised by Anubhab Gupta in the  Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics and grew out of a larger training intervention through the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Integrated Pest Management, led by Rangaswamy Muniappan.

Since 2014, the IPM Innovation Lab has worked with farmers on Bhola Island to study and promote practices that reduce pest damage while limiting reliance on chemical pesticides. Integrated pest management, or IPM, uses more environmentally friendly approaches to managing pests and crop disease.

A redesigned approach delivers real results

Motivated by Das’ findings, the research team redesigned the intervention. The revised program narrowed its focus to IPM practices and paired that training with seasonlong extension support. Farmers could ask questions and get guidance at each stage of the growing season.

The results were striking.

The adoption of IPM inputs increased significantly, and chemical pesticide use fell by 30 to 50 percent among participating farmers. Those who adopted the new practices also saw measurable gains in yields. Farmers who embraced IPM in the first stages of the season were likely to sustain and deepen their participation as the season progressed.

Lessons for policymakers and program designers

Das’ work carries clear implications for how development programs could be designed and evaluated. Effective agricultural training requires not just good content, but the right sequencing, sustained support, and messaging that resonates with farmers’ immediate concerns. Emphasizing cost savings and reduced chemical exposure, rather than distant productivity gains, helps farmers see the relevance of new practices in their own lives.

For Virginia Tech, the work reflects a broader commitment to applied research that improves lives beyond campus and across borders. Through the IPM Innovation Lab and its partners, the university is helping development organizations better understand how to design programs that farmers can use, sustain, and build on.

On Bhola Island, that starts with a simple but important insight: Sometimes, better training begins with asking farmers to learn less at once, and supporting them more along the way.