Research Projects

Sozio-ökonomische Auswirkungen einer Jatropha-Plantage auf ländliche Haushalte und deren Gemeinden in Madagaskar

Project begin: 01.07.2012

Project end: 30.04.2017

Sponsor mark: A 298 12

Involved persons

• Prof. Dr. Manfred Zeller
• M.Sc. Christine Bosch

Involved institutions

• Rural Development Theory and Policy

Sponsors

• Stiftung Energieforschung Ba-Wü

Policies and institutions for achieving the virtuous food-energy-water nexus in Sub-Saharan Africa

Project begin: 01.06.2013

Project end: 31.12.2016

Involved persons

• Prof. Dr. Manfred Zeller
• M.Sc. Emily McNulty

Involved institutions

• Rural Development Theory and Policy

Sponsors

• IFPRI
• BMZ

Impact Evaluation of Agricultural and Health Interventions to Alleviate Iron Deficiency in Rural Guatemala (IFPRI Guatemala Project)

Micronutrient malnutrition is known as “hidden hunger” because its symptoms have few visible warning signs. Caused by a lack of critical micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron and zinc, hidden hunger impairs the mental and physical development of children and adolescents and can result in lower IQ, stunting, and blindness. Hidden hunger is primarily caused by poor quality diets, characterized by a high intake of staple foods and low consumption of micronutrient-rich non-staple foods. One promising strategy for fighting hidden hunger is biofortification: a method used to improve the nutritional content of staple food crops by breeding varieties that are richer in micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron, and zinc than conventional ones.

To add to the small but growing body of empirical evidence on the nutritional impact and cost-effectiveness of biofortification, the project evaluates the adoption, diffusion, and nutrition impacts of an iron bean delivery strategy in rural Guatemala. Additional goals are to draw implications for iron bean delivery interventions in other countries, and on the roles/impact of information campaigns on engendering behavioral change, once the evaluation is completed.

The study, led by HarvestPlus, is implemented in seven municipalities in the departments of Jutiapa, Jalapa, and Chiquimula in the Dry Corridor, as they are among the priority areas for crop biofortification given anemia prevalence rates. To answer the study's research questions, a cluster randomized trial (CRT) is implemented, where villages are randomly assigned to a treatment arm that includes villages that receive iron bean seed with agronomic and nutritional information, and a control group that does not receive these. Following the endline, the control group will also be provided the same benefits.

Scaling Systems and Partnerships for Accelerating the Adoption of Improved Tilapia Strains by Small-Scale Fish Farmers

Fish farming in developing countries is still largely based on unimproved fish strains which are genetically similar or inferior to wild counterparts. There are only a few examples where aquaculture production has benefited from genetically improved strains. This results in aquaculture with poor growth rate, high mortality, and high production costs. Genetically improved seeds of fish and other aquatic species are essential for increasing productivity and improving socio-economic performance of aquaculture production. Due to the importance of tilapia in aquaculture in developing countries, WorldFish and partners developed an improved tilapia strain with faster growth, known as Genetically Improved Farmed Tilapia (GIFT).

These gains need to be supported by research that can catalyze the acceptance of the improved strain, and especially among small-scale farmers that are often the last to benefit from these gains. In order to expand the adoption of improved tilapia strains, it is necessary to conduct an integrated assessment to evaluate its performance, economic viability, social acceptability, environmental compatibility, and overall impact under varied agro-ecological systems and socioeconomic environments.

The project, led by WorldFish, conduct integrated performance assessments of improved tilapia strains at farm level to identify opportunities and constraints affecting adoption of sustainable intensification of aquaculture systems using improved strains of tilapia. Myanmar is chosen as the country for this analysis because Myanmar is one of the world’s major aquaculture producing countries, but the technical and socioeconomic characteristics of aquaculture in Myanmar has not been adequately studied compared with the other major fish farming countries. Myanmar is a country where the major household diet share of animal protein and micronutrients comes from fish consumption. This leads to a fast-growing demand for fish as the country urbanizes and increases in income.

GRiSP (Global Rice Science Partnership; led by IRRI)

Subprojects:

Impact of fertilizer subsidy program on farm level productivity and food security: A case study of rice producers in northern Ghana

Assessing the impact of improved rice-based technology adoption on household food security in The Gambia

DFG Ethiopia Project

This research project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), and the project team is closely collaborating with Hawassa University in Ethiopia.

The project aims (i) to identify the constraints to the adoption of major agricultural innovations by Ethiopian smallholder farmers under particular consideration of risk exposure, risk preferences, the role of social networks (including informal financial institutions), and intra-household bargaining, and (ii) to assess the welfare impact of these innovations at the household level. The project expands the research frontier in the analysis of technology adoption under risk, and the findings serve to improve sustainable agricultural technology dissemination in poor and risky agrarian settings, contributing to more effective policy design. Furthermore, the project advances social science research methods by developing and testing innovative hypothetical and non-hypothetical methods to empirically elicit farmers’ risk preferences and intra-household bargaining, which are hypothesized to be important determinants of technology adoption under risk. Lastly, welfare implications of various technologies and technology sets are examined to sustain the knowledge base.

Project's publications in peer-reviewed academic journals: 

Khor, L. Y., Sariyev, O., & Loos, T. (2020). Gender differences in risk behavior and the link to household effects and individual wealth. Journal of Economic Psychology, 102266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2020.102266

Sariyev, O., Loos, T. K., & Khor, L. Y. (2020). Intra-household decision-making, production diversity, and dietary quality: a panel data analysis of Ethiopian rural households. Food Security, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-020-01098-9

Sariyev, O., Loos, T. K., & Zeller, M. (2020). Women’s participation in decision-making and its implications for human capital investment. European Review of Agricultural Economics, 47(5), 1803–1825 https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/jbaa008

Biru, W. D., Zeller, M., & Loos, T. K. (2019). The Impact of Agricultural Technologies on Poverty and Vulnerability of Smallholders in Ethiopia: A Panel Data Analysis. Social Indicators Research, 147(2), 517–544. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-019-02166-0

Husen, N. A., Loos, T.K., & Siddig, K.H.A. (2017). Social Capital and Agricultural Technology Adoption among Ethiopian Farmers. American Journal of Rural Development, 5(3), 65–72. doi.org/10.12691/ajrd-5-3-2