This page provides information on ongoing research projects I am involved in.
Increasing Adoption and Varietal Turnover of Seed—Consumer and Producer Side Interventions
To increase adoption of new agricultural technologies, some level of initial subsidy is often offered. For instance, companies may offer free trial packs of new improved seed varieties; governments may offer subsidies to increase varietal turnover. However, it is also often argued that if something was obtained for free, it may be used differently than when something has a price attached to it. In this paper, we first test the effectiveness of free trial packs by testing if farmers that receive a sample of a new improved seed variety are more likely to adopt it in the future that a control group of farmers who did not get a sample. Furthermore we test whether farmers learn differently from seed that was obtained for free than if they had to pay a (small) price for it. This questions is investigated using BDM auction—essentially a two stage pricing design—such that we can disentangle the selection effect, whereby farmers that are prepared to pay a price are likely to be more motivated to learn from it for subsequent adoption decisions, and the sunk cost effect, where a product that has a price attached to it is valued more. In addition to interventions that function as a push factor on the production side, consumer demand may also be an important pull factor for adoption of new or improved varieties. Using a factorial design, we thus also include a consumer side intervention that focuses on demonstrating the ease of cocking, which was found to be a desirable characteristic that is often overlooked. This work with Berber Kramer, Carly Trachtman and Leocardia Nabwire.
Incentivizing quality in the dairy value chain
Quality of products transacted within value chains, and the preservation of quality throughout the chain, is central to value chain development. Working with quality inputs often reduces production costs further down the value chain. Quality inputs and safeguarding quality while processing, storing, and transporting commodities is also important from a food safety perspective. In general, transformation of value chains often coincide with quality upgrading.
Over the past decade, the dairy sub-sector in Uganda has changed dramatically. Particularly in the areas around Mbarara, commonly referred to as the southwestern milk shed, an influx of foreign direct investment has created the preconditions for modern dairy value chains to emerge. The area now has an extensive network of milk cooling and collection centers that link smallholder farmers to a cluster of processors. In the dairy value chain, quality is particularly important. Milk quality determines what products can be produced. For instance, for production of cheese, a high fat content is needed and milk needs to be fresh. To extract caseine, freshness is less important, but the protein content needs to be high. Furthermore, it goes without saying that the protection of milk from dirt and contamination is important for food safety, as milk is very unstable.
At the same time, it is surprising that there seems to be no market for quality in the sub-sector. For instance, using recently collected survey data, we find that of a sample of 200 farmers that sold to milk collection centers, only 6 percent indicated that they received a quality premium. From 114 milk collection centers that were included in the survey, we found that only about 18 percent (sometimes) paid a price premium to farmers. At the same time, expert interviews with processors indicate that their main challenge is related to sourcing milk of sufficient quality, pointing out issues related to butter fat content and solid non-fat content of the milk. They also say that the would be willing to pay for it.
When asked about what farmers need to do to increase quality, farmers mainly refer to practices that affect milk sanitation. Most training and extension activities in the area focus on the importance of using proper equipment (stainless steel milk churns as opposed to plastic jerry cans) and simple practices such as washing hands and udders. These technologies and practices do not affect the milk quality attributes that processors seem to care most about. To increase butter fat content and solid non-fat content, it is especially feeding practices that matter.
The above points to at least two problems which constrain the development of a market for quality milk. First, at a technological level, instruments necessary to make the desired quality attributes visible are lacking. Most milk collection centers only engage in rudimentary testing for adulteration (using a gravity based test with a device called a lactometer) and freshness (using the alcohol test). Farmers do not have access to testing equipment. Second, at the knowledge level, farmers do not seem to know what quality parameters are important further downstream the value chain.
In this research, we will test various hypothesis using a randomized control trial with interventions at both the level of the milk collection centers and at the farmer level. At the level of the milk collection center, we work with the Uganda Dairy Development Authority (DDA) to scale up their Quality-Based Milk Payment Scheme (QBMPS) that was piloted by last year in Uganda’s SW milkshed. It involves installing lactoscans at milk collection centers that allows testing of individual milk deliveries for quality parameters desired by processors. We want to test what the impact of visualizing these quality attributes at this level is on both farmers and milk collection centers. We then use a split plot design to mix in a second intervention at the level of the farmers. Here, we provide a video-based information treatment where farmers are informed about what quality parameters processors deem important and how they can improve on these parameters. This project is part of a OneCG Initiative on Rethinking Food Markets. This project is with Jordan Chamberin and Sarah Kariuki, and Richard Ariong.
Why do farmers sell immediately after harvest when prices are lowest?
It is often observed that smallholder farmers sell most—if not all—of their marketable surplus or cash crops immediately after the harvest to itinerant traders at the farm gate. Selling immediately after the harvest is not optimal. Thin and poorly integrated markets mean that immediately post harvest, prices in excess supply areas drop. Later, during the lean season when some of the farmers run out of stock, prices have recovered, or even increase further since farmers start to buy back. This leads to the “sell low buy high” puzzle (Stephens and Barrett, 2011; Burke et al., 2018). In addition to high supply immediately post harvest, agricultural commodities are often not yet in optimal condition. For instance, in the case of maize, fresh grains are generally not dry enough, requiring further processing and leading to increased risk of rot by the trader. Often, this is used by buyers as a reason to further drive down the price paid to the farmer. In this study, we zoom in on three potential behavioural explanations why farmers seemingly sell at sub-optimal time. One potential explanation is situated at the household expenditure side, and assumes that households face challenges in accurately predictive future expenditures. Such budget neglect leads farmer to sell more early on and save too little for later in the year. A second potential explanation is situates at the household income side. Here the assumption is that farmers face cognitive challenges in making inter-temporal cost benefit calculations (Drexler et al., 2014) and fail to commit to certain thresholds (Ashraf et al., 2006; Duflo et al., 2011). This project is together with Leocardia Nabwire, Joachim De Weerdt, Brion Dillon, and Emmanuel Hami.
Demand and supply factors constraining the emergence and sustainability of an efficient seed system
Agricultural technology remains under-adopted among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. We investigate how the quality of an agricultural technology – improved maize seed – affects its adoption. The research entails three hypotheses that will be tested in a series of randomized controlled trials among agro-input dealers and smallholder farmers in Uganda. In a first hypothesis, quality concerns that constrain uptake are caused by information inefficiencies at the level of the agro-input dealer, who is assumed to lack knowledge about proper storage and handling. An intensive training program is expected to increase improved maize seed quality and subsequent adoption by farmers. A second hypothesis conjectures that information asymmetry between seller and buyer with respect to the quality of seed – a classic lemons technology – leads to under-adoption. We implement a crowd-sourced information clearinghouse similar to yelp.com to test this hypothesis. This hypothesis targets the interaction between farmers and input dealers. A third hypothesis targets farmers directly, as sub-optimal adoption is assumed to be caused by learning failures: Farmers might attribute disappointing outcomes to poor input quality, while in reality many input dimensions like the time of planting, weeding and fertilizer application co-determine outcomes. An ICT-mediated information campaign that stresses the importance of paying attention to all input dimensions is implemented to test this hypothesis. This is a project together with David Spielman, Robert Sparrow and Caroline Miehe.
Impact Evaluation of the Community Advocacy Forum (baraza) in Uganda
The baraza project, initiated in 2009, is a government-led initiative in Uganda that aims to increase the quality of public service delivery through the provision of information and the involvement of beneficiaries in project monitoring by means of providing citizens with an advocacy forum. We investigate the impact of this intervention using a cluster randomized control trial involving more than 12000 households. In addition to testing whether district level barazas are as effective as sub-county level barazas, we also study the relative importance of information provision and deliberation within a baraza event. Currently, the baraza interventions are being rolled out nationwide. This study was funded by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) and is joint work with Caroline Miehe, Nassul Kabunga and Tewodaj Mogues. A discussion paper documenting a qualitative self-assessment of two barazas has already been published. A mock report can be found on the AEA RCT registry, as well as on GitHub.