Of Trackers and Tractors. Using a Smartphone App and Compositional Data Analysis to Explore the Link Between Mechanization and Intra-Household Allocation of Time in Zambia

Abstract

Digital tools may help to study socioeconomic aspects of agricultural development that are difficult to measure such as the effects of new technologies on the intra-household allocation of time. As new technologies may target different crops and tasks, they can affect time-use of men, women, boys and girls differently. Development strategies that overlook such effects can have negative consequences. In this paper, the effects of agricultural mechanization on timeuse in smallholder farming households in Zambia were investigated. For this, a novel data collection method was used: a pictorial smartphone application that allows real-time recording of time-use to eliminate recall bias. Existing studies analysing intra-household allocation of resources often focus on adults, this study pays attention to children as well. The study also addressed seasonal variations. For data analysis, compositional data analysis was used, which yields higher accuracy than univariate analysis by accounting for the co-dependence and sum constraint of time-use data. The study found that women benefit relatively more from mechanization during land preparation, which leads to gender differentiation. There was some evidence that the time "saved" is used for off-farm and domestic work. No negative secondround effects during weeding and harvesting/processing and no negative effects on children were found.

Interactive relationship between non-farm employment and mechanization service expenditure in rural China

“…In essence, mechanization service usage substitutes household heads' farm labor time and allows them to participate in non-farm work activities. Our finding is consistent with the previous studies highlighting the role of agricultural mechanization in promoting non-farm work participation (Daum et al, 2019;Goodwin, 2015;Nguyen and Warr, 2020).…”

“…Several studies have made efforts to explore whether or not farm machinery use can boost rural-to-urban migration or non-farm employment (e.g. Daum et al, 2019;Goodwin, 2015;Ito and Ni, 2013;Nguyen and Warr, 2020;Rada and Fuglie, 2019;Su et al, 2016). In general, these studies emphasize that farm machinery substitutes farm labor and frees up farm labor time that can be allocated to non-farm activities.…”

“…Lu and Xie (2018) found that smaller and easy-to-operate machinery helps elderly farmers substitute labor inputs in China. Daum et al (2019) revealed that women who use tractors in farm production have more time for non-farm work in Zambia. Nguyen and Warr (2020) showed that mechanization enables farmers to allocate more farm labor time to non-farm work in Vietnam.…”

Accessing the effect of smartphone agricultural applications on land transfer: evidence from Sichuan province in China

“…Third, this study finds that the significant impact of using SAAs on land transfer-in area is higher in the group with access to agricultural online market information than that without. This indicates that SAAs can enable farmers to acquire more information about agricultural marketing (Daum et al. , 2019).…”

“…This pathway may provide farmers with more farming service options and make their agricultural production more efficient, leading to an increased probability. As seen in Figure 1, SAAs may improve accessibility to agricultural services, promoting the likelihood of land transfer choice (Daum et al. , 2019).…”