Behavioural Interventions and Agricultural Innovation: Evidence-Based Strategies to Drive Technology Adoption

This open access book synthesizes the role behavioural sciences can play in promoting the use of agricultural innovations to jumpstart productivity growth in developing countries. Dr Julius J. Okello and his team of distinguished coauthors explore how behavioural interventions can be harnessed to spur the adoption of agricultural innovation and improve quality of life of people depending on it. The authors bring together into one volume recent evidence of their applications and synthesize the current strategies and best practices to highlight major implications for practice and policy. The wide focus ranging from crop and livestock production to climate change adaptation and supply chain management underscore the versatility of behavioural interventions in agriculture. This book will be greatly valuable to development practitioners, policy makers and the academia, serving as a guide in scholarly design of studies investigating the efficacy of behavioural interventions and a reference material for NGO leaders, policy makers, students and lecturers and funding agencies.

Julius J. Okello is an Agricultural Economist and agrifood systems impact evaluation specialist with more than 20 years of post-doctoral experience leading multinational, transdisciplinary research-for-development initiatives. Until July 2025, he served as Senior Scientist (Impact Assessment) at the International Potato Center (CIP), where he directed studies on technology adoption, behavioural interventions, and market intelligence across Africa and Asia. His expertise spans program management and evaluation, value chain and food systems analysis, experimental economics, and capacity development – having mentored several PhD and MSc graduates while strengthening partner capabilities across government, NGO, and university settings. Julius has secured and managed large competitive grants and published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, providing policy-relevant evidence to national and international stakeholders. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University (specialising in international agricultural development and resource/environmental economics).
David R. Just is the Susan Eckert Lynch Professor of Science and Business in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. He received his PhD (2001) and MSc (1999) in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He has published more than 160 refereed journal articles on topics including food assistance and food choice, the acceptance and adoption of new technologies, biofuel policy, and risky choice. In 2020, he was named a Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. He has also served as Director of the Graduate Programme and Director of Professional Degree Programmes at the Dyson School, as well as Area Coordinator for Applied Economics and Policy in the S.C. Johnson College of Business.
Hugo Campos serves as Deputy General Director – Science & Innovation at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru. With a Ph.D. in Plant Genetics from the John Innes Centre (England), an MBA from Universidad del Desarrollo (Chile), and a Professional Certificate in Innovation & Entrepreneurship from Stanford University (USA), he bridges science and management with fluency and has earned the World Food Prize Organization's Top Agri-Food Pioneer Award (2025), a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Root and Tuber Crops (2025), and recognition as a Foreign Fellow of India's National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Over 1,000,000 copies of his books have been downloaded or sold. He started his career as plant breeder serving diverse markets in private companies and in international development, and over the years his interests have pivoted to a wicked problem: the adoption gap that keeps Global South farmers from embracing innovations and the role of behavioral sciences in reducing such gap.

Carl-Johan Lagerkvist is Professor of Business Economics at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Uppsala, Sweden. He has a PhD in Economics from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He was Head of Department of Economics at SLU during 2008-2022. He served as editor of the European Review of Agricultural Economics during 2017-2022 and is on the editorial board of Food Quality and Preference. Lagerkvist’s research deals with behavioural decision-making; often from a consumer or farmer perspective. His research is directed towards theoretical or methodological aspects and often in relation to preference elicitation, choice analysis, issues of risk and uncertainty, as well as financial and investment aspects. He has a long-standing cooperation with different CGIAR centers, i.e. WorldFish, CIP, and ICRISAT.