Many smallholder farmers in low-income countries do not adopt agricultural inputs sold by agro-dealers due to uncertainty about their performance. We introduce a system that aggregates farmers’ evaluations of seed into ratings and disseminates them to farmers and agro-dealers. We test this approach in a randomized controlled trial in the market for high-yielding maize seed in Uganda. The intervention increases farmers’ perceptions of seed performance, adoption, and yields. It draws farmers into the formal input market and raises productivity without inducing farmers to switch sellers or inducing agro-dealers to improve performance, suggesting that updating farmers’ beliefs and reducing their uncertainty about seed performance are central to the effects of the rating system.
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