A current MRR Innovation Lab project in Mozambique is testing how different learning mechanisms may help not only the rate with which a farmer adopts new technologies (in this case an improved drought-tolerant maize seed bundled with index insurance), but also promote the sustainability of those adoption practices.

Rachel Jones, a fourth-year development economics graduate student at the University of California, UC Davis joined the research team two years ago and is integrating additional research questions within this project.

In this Q&A, Jones focuses on how a better understanding the interplay of gender, household dynamics, and learning among farmers can further deepen the potential impacts of these new resilience-building technologies on farming households in Mozambique.

Often, new technologies, in particular stress-tolerant seed varieties and agricultural index insurance, have seen limited adoption among the vulnerable households they can most benefit.  How does this project address these challenges?

The benefits of the risk mitigating technologies that are promoted in this study are realized when adverse weather events occur. In particular, the extreme drought against which the bundled drought tolerant maize is insured may occur once every 10 years or less, so it's hard for farmers to learn about the benefits of the technology through personal experience alone. This presents a challenge because if benefits aren't realized immediately, farmers may dis-adopt the improved technology, putting their scarce capital to another use. With this project, we are trying to facilitate farmer learning both through the provision of vouchers and agricultural extension. One tool we use is a gamified simulation that helps farmers to “experience” all possible weather scenarios and the corresponding benefits of the input bundle in a 15 minute period. This provides the farmers a better sense of the technology’s benefits, even though these don’t accrue each year.

How do your research interests intersect with this larger project on learning?

There is a significant amount of research that shows that agricultural households don’t necessarily allocate labor and inputs like a profit maximizing firm. Resource allocation may be inefficient relative to that of a profit maximizing firm. I am interested in studying whether intra-household resource allocation, and gender unequal allocations in particular, impede the household’s ability to respond to new economic opportunities like the adoption of risk mitigating technologies.

My work enters here because I hypothesize that an entirely different channel may concurrently affect technology adoption.  I consider whether intra-household resource allocation is a constraint to sustained adoption. The household’s “status quo” way of doing things, including the way they share income from crops as well as how they allocate their labor, may have been well suited for older technologies that don't provide the risk reduction benefits of the drought tolerant maize and index insurance bundle.

Adopting households might ideally adjust their intra-household allocation of resources, however doing so may be difficult if there is path dependence or social norms that reinforce the current intra-household allocation. It may take time for households to understand that certain complimentary adjustments are necessary to take advantage of the new technology.

You’re talking about intra-household dynamics. How does gender fit in?

I think what became evident to me early on was that strong gender norms define men and women’s spheres of responsibility and participation in decision making. We’ve seen that while women in our sample households are very active in agricultural production, men have a disproportionate role in decision making around crop choice and input use. It is therefore likely that husbands will have most say whether to adopt the bundled drought tolerant maize and index insurance. Furthermore, we have anecdotal evidence that it is husbands who tend to control the income from relatively input intensive cash crops.

I ask what role women play in adopting these technologies if they do not have claim to the increase in income that results. You might, of course, imagine collaborative households where household expenditure reflects the woman's desires, even if the man controls the money. But we could also imagine households where the woman has little incentive to collaborate in the  production of the drought tolerant maize. This may be consequential if adopting drought-tolerant maize would optimally result in the cultivation of additional acreage or the intensification of production.  If the wife does not share in the benefits, she may have little motivation to reallocate her labor, or otherwise, would not support the adoption of the new technology.

How are you addressing women’s roles, learning preferences, and approaches to household risk within this project if their perceptions and preference could be fundamentally important to uptake?

We implemented an additional gender-differentiated module within the context of agricultural extension trainings on drought-tolerant maize and insurance bundle. The module specifically sought to emphasize that the bundled technologies could help women to smooth their families’ consumption under drought. To do that, we narrated a 30 minute, illustrated story that situated the technology within the context of 2 households, one that adopted and another that didn't, the household, narrating a 30 minute. We provided scripts to men and women separately so that within the women's training we could emphasize the stakes of adoption for women’s responsibilities and hardships, in particular.

The story traced the families’ diverging trajectories as they encountered different weather scenarios. The adopting household was shown to have higher yields under moderate drought and to benefit from an indemnity payment under severe drought. In both cases, the woman was better able to ensure her family’s consumption than otherwise. In a nut shell, the training illustrated how the technology’s benefits could be distributed and used by women, in particular.

One thing we wanted to make sure was reflected in the script was the important role of women in subsistence production. Because husbands may specialize in cash crop production that is relatively riskier, the wife’s subsistence cultivation provides a safety net, ensuring the family’s consumption in bad years. If the bundled drought tolerant maize and insurance reduce the risks borne by women, they may be willing to divert some energy away from their subsistence production to higher productivity cultivation, eventually increasing household income.

What are the next steps for your research?

The research team will collect a first round of outcome data with respect to the gender-specific messaging in September 2024. At that point, we will see if households that receive this information make different decisions around adoption, including whether to allocate more labor to drought tolerant maize production. This would indicate that women’s incentives play a role in sustained adoption, even if women don’t have direct say in the adoption decision.

In an upcoming intervention, which we're hoping to implement this spring, we are going to take on intra-household resource allocation more directly.  We're planning to offer targeted couples’ trainings in which we’ll explore whether a different allocation of income and labor has the potential to be pareto improving.