Overcoming smallholder farmers’ post-harvest constraints through harvest loans and storage technology: Insights from a randomized controlled trial in Tanzania

Channa, Hira; Ricker‐Gilbert, Jacob; Feleke, Shiferaw; Abdoulaye, Tahirou

doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.102851

Cited by 12 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…As a result the capital gain was not enough to offset the cost of warrantage" (p.15). Channa et al (2022) conduct their storage and credit RCT in a year in which the price failed to rise in Malawi and write, "Maize prices did not rise in the lean season…because the government of Tanzania imposed an export ban. "…”

Section: Average Negative Returnsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 Numerous recent interventions by nongovernmental organizations and researchers have provided credit and storage options to farmers, and RCTs implemented in recent years evaluate such efforts. Burke et al (2019) provide credit to farmers in Kenya; Basu and Wong (2015) distribute storage equipment to farmers in Indonesia; Aggarwal et al (2018) encourage communal maize storage in Kenya; Channa et al (2022) combine storage and credit in Tanzania; Le Cotty et al (2019) and Delavallade and Godlonton (2020) offer an inventory credit system in Burkina Faso in two separate studies. Yet these studies generally dismiss the possibility of risky returns to storage if they mention it at all.…”

Section: Average Negative Returnsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Interestingly, several recent studies promoting randomized interventions to increase farmer storage are sited in Kenya (Aggarwal et al, 2018;Burke et al, 2019) and Tanzania (Channa et al, 2022), countries with multiple cropping seasons. 9 The full set of monthly price data available in the WFP Global Food Price database for 2000-2021 is shown by country in Appendix Tables A7, A9, A8, and A10.…”

Section: Supporting Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent studies implementing and analyzing randomized controlled trials to promote maize storage have noted incidents of the phenomena that we discuss here—prices failing to rise after harvest—mostly when an intervention to encourage storage has achieved attenuated results because it was conducted in a year in which prices failed to rise significantly after harvest (Channa et al, 2022; Le Cotty et al, 2019). For example, Le Cotty et al (2019) mention in their analysis of inventory credit in Burkina Faso, “In 2013, the rise in grain prices was exceptionally low (only three percent on average).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…8 8 Interestingly, several recent studies promoting randomized interventions to increase farmer storage are sited in Kenya (Aggarwal et al, 2018; Burke et al, 2019) and Tanzania (Channa et al, 2022), countries with multiple cropping seasons. …”

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confidence: 99%

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Price risk and small farmer maize storage in Sub‐Saharan Africa: New insights into a long‐standing puzzle

Cardell

Michelson

2022

American J Agri Economics

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Maize prices fluctuate across seasons in rural markets in many low income countries, and agricultural households struggle to sell their grain at an optimal time. We provide new insight into a persistent puzzle: small farmers in lowincome countries tend to sell their maize at harvest, when prices are low, rather than storing and waiting until prices increase later in the year. Our descriptive analysis uses 20 years of data from 1038 retail markets in 30 African countries to demonstrate that the lean season price (the "high price" season) fails to rise above the harvest season price (the "low price" season) 16.3% of the time on average in countries with a single maize season and between 15.9% and 24.9% on average in countries with two maize seasons. On the basis of that stylized fact, we propose that aversion to these negative returns may contribute to farmers' decisions to opt out of storage at harvest. Using a smaller dataset of 425 retail markets in 10 countries with a single maize season, we show that even moderately risk averse farmers would opt out of storage in 15.3% of market years. Farmers cannot always predict returns to storage and output price risk may dissuade farmers from storing maize for the purpose of future sales, despite credit access. Our results indicate that other mechanisms, such as forward contracts or multiyear credit, may be necessary to mitigate downside price risk.

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Section: Average Negative Returnsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Average Negative Returnsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Supporting Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Price risk and small farmer maize storage in Sub‐Saharan Africa: New insights into a long‐standing puzzle

Cardell

Michelson

2022

American J Agri Economics

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Exploring the role of interest rates, macroeconomic environment, agricultural cycle, and gender on loan demand in the agricultural sector: Evidence from Mali

Ölkers,

Mußhoff

2023

Agribusiness

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Formal credit plays an important role for the development of the agriculture sector in developing countries because many farmers are characterized as liquidity constrained. Access to credit can increase farmers' purchasing power for inputs and agricultural technology, thus raising the overall productivity. Farmers in Mali are particularly vulnerable to shocks, such as heavy precipitation events. Access to liquidity to increase the resilience of the agricultural sector is essential. Therefore, higher financing volumes are required, which make the analysis of loan demand in agriculture of interest. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the role of the interest rate, the macroeconomic environment, the agricultural cycle and the gender of the farmer on the loan demand in the agricultural sector from a country in the Sahel. Unique and comprehensive loan data at the farm level, provided by a commercial Malian bank, is used for this analysis. The analysis covers the period from 2010 to 2020. Two different estimation strategies are combined. First, an ordinary least square regression is applied with the granted loan amount as the dependent variable. Second, the machine learning technique, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator, is applied to select the most relevant features to be used as explanatory variables in the estimation. The results reveal that the interest rate, the gross value added, the farmer's gender as well as the agricultural cycle have statistically significant effects on the granted loan demand in agriculture. These results are of interest to policymakers, who deal with financial inclusion as well as market failures, and agricultural financial institutions who could incorporate such information in the design of future loan products to stimulate farmers' loan demand, especially for female farmers. [EconLit Citations: G20, G21, O13, O16, Q14, Q18].

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Comparative utility of hermetic and conventional grain storage bags for smallholder farmers: a meta‐analysis

Ngoma,

Monjerezi,

Leslie

et al. 2023

J Sci Food Agric

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Postharvest management is critical to attaining household food, nutrition, and income security. Hermetic grain storage bags offer an effective pesticide‐free way to protect stored grain against fungal and insect infestation. We evaluated articles indexed in the Web of Science that included experiments comparing the storage efficacy of conventional and hermetic storage bags based on grain germination rate, insect infestation, physical damage, mycotoxin contamination, and changes in weight and moisture content. Compared with grain stored in hermetic bags, grain stored in conventional bags lost 3.6‐fold more seed viability, contained 42‐fold more insects, had 11‐fold more physical damage, and lost 23‐fold more grain weight, while grain moisture levels were similar for both hermetic and conventional storage bags. Mycotoxin contamination levels were not as frequently assessed. Levels could be low in grain stored in both types of bags, or levels could be low in hermetic bags and significantly higher in conventional bags. The improved properties of grain stored in hermetic bags can increase food security and household income by providing safe storage options for maintaining seed germinability, and for consumption and/or sale when food supplies are high, or when prices are low. Hermetic bags are economically feasible for use by subsistence farmers in Sub‐Saharan Africa for grain for household consumption and for carrying‐over seed for planting in the next season. Additional studies are needed to verify the mycotoxin contamination results and to determine if there are differences in functional food characteristics, e.g. flavor and cooking properties, that have not been as comprehensively studied. © 2023 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

show abstract

Overcoming smallholder farmers’ post-harvest constraints through harvest loans and storage technology: Insights from a randomized controlled trial in Tanzania

Cited by 12 publications

References 24 publications

Price risk and small farmer maize storage in Sub‐Saharan Africa: New insights into a long‐standing puzzle

Price risk and small farmer maize storage in Sub‐Saharan Africa: New insights into a long‐standing puzzle

Exploring the role of interest rates, macroeconomic environment, agricultural cycle, and gender on loan demand in the agricultural sector: Evidence from Mali

Comparative utility of hermetic and conventional grain storage bags for smallholder farmers: a meta‐analysis

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