Nature-inspired solutions for food loss prevention: exploring smallholder farmers' willingness to adopt solar-powered cold storage

At COP27, the United Nations made a clarion call for addressing food system inefficiencies, specifically highlighting the need for innovative research into sustainable cold storage technologies for postharvest loss reduction. Consistent with this call, we explore smallholder farmers' willingness to adopt off-grid solar-powered cold storage in Ghana using surveys with small scale vegetable growers ( n = 1,001). We put in conversation with one another multiple adoption theories—economic constraints, innovation diffusion, adopter perception—in framing our analysis, enabling us to test a broad list of theoretically relevant variables. Descriptive analysis show more than two-thirds of smallholder farmers were willing to adopt solar-powered cold storage for food loss reduction. Findings from logistic regression analysis reveal farmers' willingness to adopt solar-powered cold storage mirrors a blend of drivers that cut across theoretical fronts including economic constraints (i.e., wealth and profit); innovation diffusion factors including training on postharvest management and timely access to extension services; perception variables (i.e., the extent to which farmers view food loss as a major issue and prior exposure and use of similar agricultural innovations); and contextual agricultural conditions (i.e., farm size and yield). Our findings demonstrate the complexity of technology adoption in smallholder agricultural systems and the need for agricultural policy on adoption to move beyond the predominant emphasis on economic factors to include attention to adopter perception and contextual factors. It is critical for agricultural policy to address these multifaceted drivers simultaneously to enhance the uptake of sustainable modern agricultural solutions like solar-powered coolers.