Download - Gender: gendered technology adoption and household food security in semi arid eastern kenya
“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.