Can participatory video-based extension increase awareness and knowledge of climate adaptation practices?

With growing climate variability and climate change, farmers need to adjust their farming technologies and practices to ensure continued production and income generation. But farmers are often not aware of the most suitable practices under a changing climate. Awareness of adaptation practices is even more limited for women farmers. Traditional extension approaches have mostly retained a status quo or even worsened the gender gap in information provision. In recent years, participatory video screening has been used to show more complex agricultural technologies and practices with the goal to reach both women and men farmers. This study evaluated the impact of a video-based extension on the awareness and adoption of CSA practices among men and women at baseline and endline. Awareness of the promoted CSA practices grew markedly among the treatment farmers, especially with low awareness at baseline. Further, the video-intervention raised awareness more for women than men and thus successfully addressed challenges faced by other extension approaches. We also find substantial spillover effects of the videos on the awareness of other CSA practices. However, the study found no change in adoption of the practices, suggesting that overcoming the information constraint experienced by farmers is insufficient without also overcoming financial constraints that were particularly severe as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.