“Gendered technology adoption and household food security in semi-arid Eastern Kenya”

Esther Njuguna, Leigh Brownhill, Esther Kihoro, Lutta Muhammad, Gordon Hickey

Presented at the International Food Security Dialogue 2014

“Enhancing Food Production, Gender Equity and Nutritional Security in a Changing World”

Sponsored By: Hosted By:

Outline• Introduction to the KARI-McGill project in Kenya• Gender integration in the project objectives,

activities and outcomes• Gender survey• Methodology• Results• Discussion• Conclusions

Innovating for Resilient Farming Systems in Semi-Arid Eastern Kenya

Innovating for Resilient Farming Systems in Semi-Arid Eastern Kenya

• Objectives:– Understand traditional food systems and drivers of

food insecurity– Scale up the adoption and assess the impacts of

agricultural innovations prioritized by farmers– Increase household consumption of highly-

nutritious, traditional food crops – Strengthen links to input and output markets – Contribute to the formulation of resilience-

focused policies

Integration of gender in all project activities

• Gendered objectives• Gender strategy• Orphan crops and indigenous chicken:

Women’s enterprises• 2/3 gender balance in farmer groups and

project activities• Gender disaggregated prioritization • Training and farmer-to-farmer learning• Monitoring and evaluation of impacts

Women’s project participation

56%

37%

4%

1% 1%

Project partners

Female farmers (755) Male farmers (498) KARI (60) McGill (20)

Others (10)

Gender survey: Adoption of agricultural innovations

The objective of the study was to investigate the process of adoption by women smallholder farmers and how this is influenced by both endogenous and exogenous factors (e.g., household division of labor and limitations on women’s mobility).

Gender survey: Adoption of agricultural innovations

(n = 405)

PPATE SPATE Non-participating

187 136 82

FHH MHFM MHH

66 57 280

By farmer group type

By household type

SPATE

SPATE

SPATE

Results

• We examined all stages of adoption decision-making, or the ‘adoption cycle.’

• This included decision to adopt a crop, ploughing, planting, weeding, harvesting, marketing and use of income.

• Ongoing analysis considers other post-harvest aspects including household consumption.

Gendered participation in green gram enterprise by group-type and household-type

Enterprise choice

ploughing

weeding

harvesting

marketing

income use

0

50

100

Women’s participation in green grams en-terprise across household type

FHH MHH MHFM

Enterprise choice

ploughing

weeding

harvesting

marketing

income use

0

50

Women’s participation in green gram en-terprise across farmer group type

PPATE SPATE Non project

Gendered participation in maize enterprise by group-type and household-type

Enterprise choice

ploughing

weeding

harvesting

marketing

income use

0

50

Women’s participation in maize enterprise across farmer group

typePPATE SPATE Non project

Enterprise choice

ploughing

weeding

harvesting

marketing

income use

0

50

100

Women’s participation in the maize enterprise by household

typeFHH MHH MHFM

Gendered participation in mango enterprise by group-type and household-type

Enterprise choice

ploughing

weeding

harvesting

marketing

income use

0

20

40

Women’s participation in mango enterprise across group type

PPATE SPATE Non project

Enterprise choice

ploughing

weeding

harvesting

marketing

income use

0

50

100

Women’s participation in mango enterprise by farmer group type

FHH MHH MHFM

Discussion

• We would have expected that in working with groups in which majority of members are women, and in dealing with what are traditional subsistence or food crops, that women would emerge as highly empowered in all aspects of the enterprise, including decisions over use of income.

• This has not been the case. Women invest more labor than men but reap fewer rewards in terms of income. Why do they continue to farm these crops?

Non-priced benefits?

• Income is not the only incentive for farming activities:• Sufficient provision of food for the household• Provision of nutritious, culturally appropriate foods

for the family.• Ability to save seeds (selection, innovation)• Building social capital (gifts, contributions)• These are benefits that women control more than

men• Ecological services: hummus, compost, nitrogen-fixing

Reduction of hunger is priceless…

January February March April May June July August September October November December0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

PPATE BEFORE PPATE AFTER

Percentage of households without sufficient food in given months, in 2011 and 2013

Farmer groups serve as an important form of social capital for women

• In all categories, women participate in groups more than men. This emphasizes the social capital that women build, maintain, use and rely upon to strengthen their capacities as well as to compensate, to some degree, for lack of access to key assets (including income), through sharing of labor and resources.

ppate males

ppate females

spate male

spate female

np male

np female

0

50

100

% of farmers participating in farmer groups

Conclusion

• Overall, we found that women adopted ‘orphaned’ or ‘high value’ traditional food crops robustly, alone or in cooperation with husbands or other male relatives. This was in contrast with fruit tree crops.

• The results lead to a blurring of lines between what are known as men’s and women’s crops.

• Group-work offers a socially-networked pathway towards improving household food security. When one woman farmer gains knowledge and experiences positive results, she is also likely to share with many other women in her social networks, enhancing the scaling-up of knowledge and technology adoption.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to our funders, IDRC/DFATD; our institutions, KARI and McGill; the project research team and especially to the farmers of Eastern Kenya.

A special thanks to the University of Alberta and all the organizers of the Dialogue.