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Drip irrigation has long been promoted as a promising way to meet today's world water, food and poverty challenges. In most scientific and policy documents, drip irrigation is framed as a technological innovation with definitive intrinsic characteristics—that of efficiency, productivity and modernity. Based on evidence from North and West Africa as well as South Asia, we show that there are multiple actors involved in shaping this imagery, the legitimacy of which largely stems from an engineering perspective that treats technology and potential as ‘truths’ that exist independently of the context of use. Rather than ascribing the advent of drip irrigation as a successful technology to intrinsic technical features, this paper proposes to see it as grounded in the ability drip irrigation has to lend itself to multiple contexts and discourses that articulate desirable futures. We thus adopt a view of technology whereby the ‘real’ (i.e. the drip irrigation hardware) acquires its characteristics only through, and within, the network of institutions, discourses and practices that enact it. Such a perspective sheds light on the iterative alignments that take place between hardware and context and treat these as inherent features, rather than externalities, of the innovation process. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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This article deals with the comparison of the conventional training based on two day community workshops and farmer-to-farmer video used as methodologies for the dissemination of improved rice parboiling process in Benin. From November 2007 to May 2008, we interviewed 160 women and 17 women groups who had been exposed to both, one or other of the methodologies. Data were analysed using ANOVA and logistic binomial regressions.Video reached more women (74%) than conventional training (27%). The conventional training was biased by participant selection, stakes in per diem payment and monopoly by the elite class. Video helped to overcome local power structures and reduced conflict at the community level. More than 95% of those who watched the video adopted drying their rice on tarpaulins and removed their shoes before stirring the rice, compared to about 50% of those who received traditional training and did not watch the video. Group use of the improved equipment was significantly higher for those who watched the video (p B0.05). By 2009, the various rice videos had been translated into over 30 African languages by Africa Rice Centre (Africa Rice) partners and involved 500 organizations and over 130,000 farmers. This study helps to give a better understanding of the role that farmer-to-farmer video could play in agricultural extension. This comparative analysis is an opportunity for a better understanding of how farmer-to-farmer video improves farmers' practices and attitudes in agricultural technology dissemination.

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