The Role of Gender in Adoption of a

Biofortified Crop: Evidence on Orange-

Fleshed Sweet Potato in Uganda

Julia Behrman, Daniel O. Gilligan, Neha Kumar, Scott McNiven, Agnes Quisumbing

Presented by

Daniel O. Gilligan, IFPRI

BRAC Centre, Rajendrapur, Bangladesh

04 November 2011

Gender and Biofortification

• HarvestPlus is promoting biofortification as a strategy to reduce malnutrition (e.g., vitamin A deficiency (VAD); iron deficiency)

– strategy: breed staples crops to be a rich source of missing micronutrients like iron, vitamin A, and zinc

– potential: sustainable in rural areas, self-targeting toward the poor, cost-effective over time

• Success of biofortification depends on widespread adoption and consumption of new crop varieties. Gender may be important:

– women provide much of the on-farm labor in Africa and elsewhere and are primarily responsible for child diets

– there is often a complex dynamic of intrahousehold gender relations for crop choice (von Braun, Puetz and Webb, 1989)

• New research addresses constraints to crop technology adoption, but with limited attention to gender (Conley and Udry, 2010; Suri, 2011)

• The HarvestPlus Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato (OFSP) Project

• disseminate provitamin-A-rich OFSP as a strategy to increase vitamin A intakes and reduce vitamin A deficiency

• OFSP vines given to 10,000 households in Uganda in 2007, followed by agriculture, nutrition and marketing trainings

• Two strategies: Model 1 (more intensive) and Model 2 (less intensive)

An Evaluation of Biofortification in Uganda

• The IFPRI/Hplus/CIP evaluation

• randomized, controlled trial

• baseline & endline surveys, 2007-2009

• n=1,472 households

• outcomes: OFSP adoption, dietary intakes of vitamin A, serum retinol

• impact report completed June, 2010

• qualitative study, April-June, 2011

Key Findings of OFSP Evaluation:

1. Impact on OFSP Adoption in 2009

0 20 40 60 80

Control

Model 2

Model 1

%

Cultivated OFSP

Impact: Model - Control M1: 64 % *** M2: 57 % ***

• Project resulted in a 57-64 % point increase in OFSP adoption

• Project increased the share of OFSP in total sweet potato (SP) area by 41 to 46 % points

2. Prevalence of Inadequate Vitamin A Intakes, Uganda

•Prevalence of inadequate vitamin A intakes

•Fell 33% for young children (age 6-35 months)

•Fell 26-36% for adult women

• Impact on reference children age 3-5 years shows no effect due to improvement in control group

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Model 1 Model 2 Control Model 1 Model 2 Control Model 1 Model 2 Control

Young children Reference children Women

%

Baseline Follow up

M1-C: -1% M2-C: -5%

M1-C: -36%** M2-C: -26%**

M1-C: -34%** M2-C: -31%**

3. Impact on Vitamin A Deficiency

• Serum retinol from blood samples was used to estimate impact on prevalence of mild vitamin A deficiency (VAD) (retinol<1.05μmol/L) for children age 3-5 at baseline or for adult women

• Findings

• For children mildly VAD at baseline

• weakly significant effect reducing prevalence of mild VAD at endline by 7.6 percentage points

• significant reduction in prevalence of mild VAD of 9.5 percentage points in model with more control variables (e.g., age, deworming), but a smaller sample

• Women: project had no impact on mild VAD

• Summary: broad adoption of OFSP substantially increases vitamin A intakes and can reduce child mild VAD

1. What roles do women and men play in the intrahousehold decision-making process to adopt OFSP? • Using data on which household members control each land parcel,

we explore gender-based differences in where OFSP is planted

2. Is OFSP adoption more common in households in which women have stronger bargaining power ?

• Effect could be driven by women’s role in managing child diets

• Women were exclusively targeted for nutrition trainings, so may have better information about the returns to adopting OFSP

• We address question 2 first in a household-level model of OFSP adoption

What is the role of gender in OFSP adoption?

Female bargaining power: asset ownership

Female exclusive

ownership

Male exclusive

ownership

Joint ownership

Share of value of land owned, 2007

0.161 0.591 0.248

Share of value of nonland assets owned, 2007

0.219 0.488 0.308

By District Land, 2007

Kamuli 0.204 0.457 0.349 Bukedea 0.108 0.739 0.154 Mukono 0.182 0.550 0.268

Nonland assets, 2007 Kamuli 0.215 0.402 0.400 Bukedea 0.164 0.623 0.227 Mukono 0.281 0.420 0.317

Table 1: Gender differentiation in asset ownership at baseline, 2007

• Women have exclusive ownership to 16.1% of land, 21.9% of other assets

• Joint ownership of assets is limited to 25-30% overall

Role of bargaining power in household adoption of OFSP

Table 2: Household-level model of OFSP adoption, controlling for women’s asset ownership at baseline

• Generally, the share of assets exclusively owned by women or by men does not affect the household decision to grow OFSP in a given season

• In female-headed households, the share of exclusively owned...

• ...land assets: weakly increases OFSP adoption

• ...nonland assets: decreases OFSP adoption

Dep. Var.: Pr(Adopt OFSP) All project households

Female headed households

Male headed households

Share of land exclusively 0.038 0.365* -0.011

owned by women, 2007 (0.070) (0.217) (0.076)

Share of nonland assets exclusively -0.029 -0.540** 0.032

owned by women, 2007 (0.069) (0.232) (0.074)

Notes: Model is seasonal random effects model including large set of household control variables. * significant at the 10% level; **significant at the 5% level.

Intrahousehold crop choice decisions

• Women alone make the crop choice decisions for 20% of land parcels

• 75% of crop choice decisions are joint, but men may receive priority in as much as 80% of those decisions

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

Full sample Kamuli Bukedea Mukono

"Who decided what to grow on this parcel?"

Females only

Males only

Joint, females first

Joint, males first

“Separate plots are not always good for the well being and unity of the family. A family can only progress if there’s cooperation between husband and wife.” --male FGD participant in Kamuli

Gender control of land parcels and OFSP

Table 4: Gender of parcel control and OFSP adoption

• Naïve models (1) and (2), ignore links in adoption decisions across parcels

• Plots jointly controlled, with women leading decision-making, are most likely to have OFSP

• Conditional on HH adoption, male controlled plots are least likely to have OFSP

Dep Var: Grow OFSP on this Unconditional All Parcels If household parcel (1) (2) adopts OFSP Parcel control: female only 0.055 0.005 -0.025

(0.021)*** (0.005) (0.030) Parcel control: male only -0.080 -0.132 -0.211

(0.055) (-0.132)** (0.053)*** Parcel control: joint, female 1st 0.112 0.063 0.032

(0.025)*** (0.063)*** (0.027) Ln expenditure per adult equ. 0.020 0.020

(0.020)* (0.015) Vitamin A knowledge, 2007 0.046 0.016

(0.046)*** (0.020) Change in vit A knowledge 0.041 0.024

(0.041)*** (0.014)* Share of SP in land area, 2007 0.226 0.085

(0.226)*** (0.052) Land area controlled, 2009 -0.062 -0.066

(-0.062)*** (0.011)*** Land parcel area, 2009 0.135 0.151

(0.135)*** (0.021)*** Ln farmer group size -0.114 -0.014

(-0.114)* (0.063) Land tenure is freehold -0.169 -0.305

(-0.169)* (0.340) Observations 5723 5032 3138

Correlated decisions across parcels

Table 5: OFSP adoption, correlated decisions across parcels

• Controlling for correlation of decisions across parcels weakens significance of effects

• Acknowledge that gender of control over parcels is not fixed; still need to account for this

• Cannot yet identify whether effects are gender differences in preferences, information or specialization

Dep Var: Grow OFSP on this

Incl. Other Parcel Controls

Household Fixed

Effects parcel (1) (2)

Parcel control: female only -0.077 -0.124

(0.052) (0.247) Parcel control: male only -0.292 -0.656*

(0.098)*** (0.345) Parcel control: joint, female 1st 0.091 0.232

(0.046)** (0.191)

No. other parcels: female only -0.088

(0.022)*** No. other parcels: male only -0.035

(0.024) No. other parcels: joint, female 1st -0.133

(0.016)*** No. other parcels: joint, male 1st -0.116

(0.012)*** Observations 5032 4490 Notes: Other control variables not reported.

Are smaller farms more egalitarian?

Table 6: OFSP adoption by size of landholdings

• Qualitative research by Julia Behrman suggested that agriculture decision-making may be more egalitarian on small farms.

• For OFSP adoption, evidence does not support ‘small but equal’ hypothesis

• Gender control over parcels has a larger effect on OFSP adoption in small farms than in large farms.

Dep Var: Grow OFSP on this Land area < 3.25 acres

Land area ≥ 3.25 acres

parcel (1) (2) Parcel control: female only -0.011 0.021

(0.034) (0.037) Parcel control: male only -0.269 -0.007

(0.078)*** (0.052) Parcel control: joint, female 1st 0.057 0.047

(0.030)* (0.032) Observations 2405 2627 Notes: Other control variables not reported.

Bargaining, parcel control and OFSP adoption

Table 7: OFSP adoption by female ownership of nonland assets

• Households in which women have weaker bargaining power are more likely to grow OFSP on joint plots with women in primary control

• Where female bargaining power is higher, decision-making on joint plots appears more egalitarian

Dep Var: Grow OFSP on this

Low share of female ownership of nonland assets

High share of female ownership of nonland assets

parcel (1) (2) Parcel control: female only 0.032 -0.036

(0.049) (0.035) Parcel control: male only -0.085 -0.198

(0.065) (0.082)** Parcel control: joint, female 1st 0.097 0.021

(0.029)*** (0.032) Observations 2377 2655 Notes: Other control variables not reported.

• Problems and successes

Good data on gender, bargaining power and control over farming, thanks in part to GAAP, are helping the adoption study

• What we would have done differently

For learning purposes, experiment with providing access to nutrition trainings between women and men, or between women and both together

Closing Points