Abstract While Black Soldier Fly Frass (BSFF) has the potential to be a natural alternative to chemical fertilizers, it has received little attention, especially within the agricultural economics community. This study contributes to filling this research gap by assessing: i) vegetable farmers’ intentions to buy BSFF, ii) the determinants of participation in institutional arrangements (IAs), such as extension access and group membership, and iii) the impact of participation in IAs on vegetable farmers’ likelihood of intending to buy BSFF. Using cross-sectional data from 790 vegetable farmers collected in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Mali, and Niger, we found that about 63% of the farmers intended to buy BSFF across countries, and about 84% in Niger, 67% in Ghana, 62% in DRC, and 47% in Mali. The multinomial endogenous treatment effect (METE) results show that vegetable farmers’ likelihood of intending to buy BSFF increases by 5 to 6 percentage points with extension access only, and by less than 1 percentage point with group membership only. When farmers simultaneously have access to extension services and are members of farmers’ groups, the probability of intending to buy BSFF is 8 percentage points higher. These results suggest the need to strengthen institutional arrangements for scaling up circular Bioeconomy-based technologies in sub-Saharan Africa.
Nyamuhirwa et al. (Thu,) studied this question.