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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Vartika Singh

Vartika Singh is a Senior Research Analyst in the Natural Resources and Resilience Unit, based in New Delhi, and a Senior Research Officer at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. She is currently a doctoral candidate at Humboldt University in Berlin and a guest researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany. Her research interest is in the nexus of food-water-energy and land. 

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experts

Markets, Trade, and Institutions

Carly Trachtman

Associate Research Fellow

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Bio

Carly Trachtman is an Associate Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit at IFPRI. Carly’s research focuses on topics such as social protection program targeting, agricultural value chains, and technology adoption. She has methodological interests in issues related to welfare measurement and experimental design. Carly received her PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC Berkeley. She also holds an MS in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC Berkeley and a BA in Economics and Mathematics from Lafayette College.

Publications

Personal Website

Google Scholar Citations

CV

Publications

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Brief

Integrating consumer traits is key to increasing uptake of improved crop varieties: Evidence and policy insights from seed sample packs and cooking events in Uganda

2024Van Campenhout, Bjorn; Nabwire, Leocardia; Kramer, Berber; Trachtman, Carly; Abate, Gashaw T.
Details

Integrating consumer traits is key to increasing uptake of improved crop varieties: Evidence and policy insights from seed sample packs and cooking events in Uganda

 Semi-subsistence farmers in developing countries often play dual roles as both consumers and producers of the same crops. Consequently, decisions regarding crop selection are influenced by a com bination of household consumption needs and market-oriented considerations.  In this policy note, we summarize findings from a field experiment suggesting that integrating con sumption-oriented traits such as taste, color, and ease of cooking alongside production advantages is crucial for driving demand for improved crop varieties.  The field experiment consists of two interventions designed to enhance the adoption of improved maize seed varieties among smallholder farmers in eastern Uganda. The first intervention involves providing farmers with free seed sample packs to plant and directly experience the production related benefits, such as higher yield potential and drought resistance. The second intervention consists of organizing cooking demonstrations and blind tasting sessions to compare maize from improved variety with local varieties, focusing on consumption traits like palatability, texture, and ease of cooking.  We find that the seed sample packs significantly enhance farmers’ perceptions of the seed’s production traits, while the cooking demonstrations improve appreciation for its consumption traits. We also find that the cooking demonstration and tasting session increased the use of fresh Bazooka seed, with some indications that this also led to higher maize productivity. On the other hand, farmers who received the sample packs are more likely to reuse/recycle the grain harvested from the sample pack as seed in the subsequent season, essentially crowding out the demand for fresh/purchased seed. We argue that this may be a rational response in the context of positive transaction costs related to the use of improved seed varieties

Year published

2024

Authors

Van Campenhout, Bjorn; Nabwire, Leocardia; Kramer, Berber; Trachtman, Carly; Abate, Gashaw T.

Citation

Campenhout, Bjorn Van; Nabwire, Leocardia; Kramer, Berber; Trachtman, Carly; and Abate, Gashaw T. 2024. Integrating consumer traits is key to increasing uptake of improved crop varieties: Evidence and policy insights from seed sample packs and cooking events in Uganda. IFPRI Policy Brief December 2024. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/168659

Country/Region

Uganda

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Consumer Behaviour; Crops; Varieties; Seeds; Farmers; Cooking; Maize

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Market Intelligence

Record type

Brief

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Working Paper

Market information and R&D investment under ambiguity: A framed artefactual experiment with plant breeding professionals

2024Trachtman, Carly; Kramer, Berber; do Nascimento Miguel, Jérémy
Details

Market information and R&D investment under ambiguity: A framed artefactual experiment with plant breeding professionals

Investments in R&D are often made under ambiguity about the potential impacts of various projects. High-quality, systematic market research could help reduce that ambiguity, including in investments in agricultural research-for-development, such as plant breeding. Using an online framed artefactual experiment with a diverse sample of breeding experts working in various disciplines across the world, we ask how market information and information quality influences breeding experts’ investments in prospects with ambiguous returns, and how the quality and source of information affect willingness to pay for market information. We find that providing market information leads participants to make more prioritized (rather than diversified) decisions. However, participants do not consider differences in information quality, instead over extrapolating from noisy and biased information signals. Finally, while most participants are willing to use experimental funds to purchase market information, around half prefer lower quality information even if higher quality information is available at the same price. We conclude that prioritizing R&D projects with greater impact opportunities will require better awareness among decision-makers of quality issues in various types of market research.

Year published

2024

Authors

Trachtman, Carly; Kramer, Berber; do Nascimento Miguel, Jérémy

Citation

Trachtman, Carly; Kramer, Berber; and do Nascimento Miguel, Jérémy. 2024. Market information and R&D investment under ambiguity: A framed artefactual experiment with plant breeding professionals. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2314. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/169025

Keywords

Agricultural Research for Development; Plant Breeding; Experimental Design; Market Research

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Market Intelligence

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Reduce, reuse, redeem: Deposit-refund recycling programs in the presence of alternatives

2024Berck, Peter; Sears, Molly; Taylor, Rebecca L. C.; Trachtman, Carly; Villas-Boas, Sofia B.
Details

Reduce, reuse, redeem: Deposit-refund recycling programs in the presence of alternatives

Understanding how consumers make recycling decisions is crucial in crafting sustainable recycling policies. We estimate consumer preferences and willingness to pay for current beverage container recycling methods, including curbside pick-up services, drop-off at government-subsidized recycling centers, and drop-off at non-subsidized centers. Using a representative online and telephone survey of California households, we estimate a revealed preference discrete choice model that identifies the key attributes explaining consumers’ beverage container disposal decisions, including the ability to receive a deposit refund (paid to consumers only if they recycle at drop-off centers) and the effort associated with bringing recyclable materials to recycling centers. Additionally, we use counterfactual policy analysis to show that increasing the refund amount increases overall household recycling rates. Infra–marginal households who are on the boundary between taking containers to recycling centers and recycling using curbside pick-up, namely white households and households with higher educational attainment, see the largest changes in consumer surplus generated by increasing refund payments. Conversely, we show that eliminating government-subsidized drop-off centers does not significantly alter consumer surplus for any major demographic group, and has little impact on whether a household chooses to recycle.

Year published

2024

Authors

Berck, Peter; Sears, Molly; Taylor, Rebecca L. C.; Trachtman, Carly; Villas-Boas, Sofia B.

Citation

Berck, Peter; Sears, Molly; Taylor, Rebecca L. C.; Trachtman, Carly; and Villas-Boas, Sofia B. 2024. Reduce, reuse, redeem: Deposit-refund recycling programs in the presence of alternatives. Ecological Economics 217 (March 2024): 108080. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.108080

Country/Region

United States

Keywords

Americas; Consumer Attitudes; Recycling; Willingness to Pay; Policies

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.108080 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Blogs

Workshop: Assessing on-the-ground impacts of genetic innovation in agriculture
IFPRI Blog
 | 
January 15, 2025

Workshop: Assessing on-the-ground impacts of genetic innovation in agriculture

By Emily Kilonzi, Berber Kramer, and Carly Trachtman

A coordinated multi-country approach.

How we used coordinated trials and meta-analysis to evaluate interventions to increase varietal turnover
IFPRI Blog
 | 
December 19, 2024

How we used coordinated trials and meta-analysis to evaluate interventions to increase varietal turnover

By Berber Kramer, Carly Trachtman, and Witold Więcek

Assessing impacts of a multi-country project.

Events

2023 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting
IFPRI at External Event

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July 23 to 25, 2023

2023 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting

Event: July 23, 2023 – 8:30 AM to July 25, 2023 – 4:15 PM EDT. IFPRI is participating in the 2023 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting.