Impact of Social Protection and

Agriculture: Child Grants

Programme (CGP) and complementary support

Silvio Daidone From Protection to Production (PtoP)

Workshop on Social Protection and Agriculture in Lesotho: Presenting evidence on Food Security

Maseru, Lesotho

June 18th , 2015

Background

• Importance of evidence and knowledge generation on the impacts of the Child Grants Programme (CGP)

• Broad-based learning agenda, comprising experimental design impact evaluation, rapid appraisals, qualitative fieldwork, general equilibrium modelling, costing review and fiscal sustainability

• Impact evaluation implemented by OPM, with EU funding and commissioned by UNICEF, revealed selective impacts of the CGP

CGP and food security

• CGP came with the messaging of spending money on children needs

• OPM evaluation found a significant impact of the CGP on reduction of food insecurity under various domains for both children and adults

• These positive results were driven also by a Food Security Grant, an additional transfer provided to CGP beneficiaries with the aim of sustaining food production

Objective of this presentation

Show and discuss the results of the “Linking Food Security to Social Protection (LFSSP)” programme, an FAO initiative aiming at improving food security status of poor and vulnerable households

Linking Food Security to Social Protection (LFSSP) programme

• What: provide vegetable seeds and training on homestead gardening

• Where: Rolled out in Litjotjela and Malaoaneng Community Councils (CCs) in Leribe district

• When: it lasted six months, from July 2013 to January 2014

• To whom: 799 households eligible for the CGP

• By whom: implemented by FAO-Lesotho, in collaboration with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the Rural Self-Help Development Association (RSDA ).

• Why: to improve the food security of poor and vulnerable households

• How: two programmes, in combination, would result in stronger impacts as compared to each programme in isolation.

Training roll-out

• Knowledge transfer through demonstration and practical exercises

• Demonstrations/construction took at least a half a day per garden

• Theoretical aspects omitted.

• Information on nutrition and food preservation not systematically given to community participants

• Field Extension Facilitators with previous project knowledge more successful in incorporating nutrition/preservation information

Evaluation of LFSSP -1-

• In the follow-up of the CGP impact evaluation, more detailed data on the kitchen/garden plot were collected in the crop production module

• This represented the baseline for the LFSSP

• Not possible to randomize receipt of LFSSP, which was given to both treatment and control households within the CGP evaluation

• Compare the behaviour of households receiving three years of CGP and one year of LFSSP vs only one year of the LFSSP on agricultural outcomes

Evaluation of LFSSP -2- • Pros:

- Very few studies attempt to evaluate quantitatively program’s complementarities

- Innovative and smart: piggy-back on existing rigorous evaluation, with a minor extension of the survey instrument

• Cons:

- Small sample size, statistical significance risk “dominating” economic significance

- Not possible to disentangle effects of the two components (randomization of LFSSP not feasible)

The sample by location, 2013

Litjotjela Malaoneng

# of CGP Families (individuals) 85 (520) 80 (414)

# of LFSSP Families (individuals) 181(961) 118 (610)

Age 25 23

NISSA 1 161 112

Females 51% 50%

Family Size 6.9 6.6

Disabled 3% 3%

Chronically ill 4% 2%

Labor-constrained family 35% 33%

Family has home garden plot 90% 87%

Family crop farms 89% 94%

Family has a cow 35% 28%

Family has an off-farm business 15% 13%

The sample by labor constraints, 2013 unconstrained constrained

Female headed family 46% 70%

Household head’s age 51 60

Household head single 53% 79%

Household head married 46% 17%

Household head widow 43% 74%

Household head is >64 31% 66%

Household head is <15 0% 1%

Household head’s education(yrs) 4.6 4.2

NISSA 1 89% 94%

Family size 6 5

Highest education (yrs) 8.5 7.2

# healthy males and females aged 18-59 3 1.1

Trends in homestead gardening harvest CGP Non-CGP

2013 2014 2013 2014

% households harvested last year

Any vegetable 84 96 83 95

… spinach 67 89 61 86

… Florida broad leaf 47 89 59 77

… English rape 55 81 53 73

... onions 4 53 6 49

... carrots 19 80 21 72

... beetroots 18 80 20 73

... cabbage 37 32 36 37

... peppers 5 15 2 17

... peas 2 1 1 4

... tomatoes 32 42 19 43

... green beans 5 5 1 8

... other 15 33 10 34

• On average,

three

additional

vegetables

harvested

• Harvest

increased in

all seasons,

except spring

Impacts on homestead gardening harvests

• CGP alone encouraged the harvest of some vegetables. With few exceptions these overall increases appear to be driven by labor unconstrained households.

• In contrast, after implementation of the LFSSP, the labor unconstrained households appear to have reduced harvests and labor constrained families achieved gains in homestead harvests.

Homestead gardening harvests: rationale of results

• Differing livelihood strategies and preferences in securing immediate food needs:

A) CGP initially allows families with sufficient labor capacity to exploit investments in small scale operations

B) After an additional year of the CGP, however, these families de-emphasize vegetable harvests

C) Labor constrained households may have initial preferences for food purchases and have been able to increase efforts in vegetable cultivation only after LSFPP assistance

Trends in gardening techniques and food preservation

• Declining

adoption rates of

food preservation

techniques

• Increase in

homestead

gardening

technologies

CGP Non-CGP 2013 2014 2013 2014 % households using

any food preservation technique 31 31 27 25

…drying 26 18 19 10 …vegetable canning 8 7 7 5 …fruit canning 23 16 15 17 gardening techniques …keyhole 33 42 33 42 …trench garden 8 75 7 66

…rain water conservation 8 19 10 22

…home produced compost 5 15 2 13

…purchased fertilizer 12 16 16 8

…home produced pest control 6 39 4 16

…frost protection 24 30 25 40 …kraal manure 5 6 4 1

Impacts on homestead gardening techniques and vegetable preservation

• Little impact on homestead gardening practices and food preservation adoption by CGP alone

• Strong impacts from an additional year of CGP and LFSSP on gardening practices, especially for labor constrained beneficiaries.

Results – land use

• Increasing trends in land operation and increases in ownership of home garden plots, especially among CGP households (a doubling from 0.35 to 0.70 hectares)

• Combination of the CGP and the LFSSP led to a large increase in operated land among beneficiary households.

a) most likely due to the three years of cash, and less to the LFSSP

b) Impacts on operated land observed only on labor unconstrained households

Results – input use

• Generally no big changes in input use, except an increase in organic fertilizers, and a big reduction in seeds purchase.

• CGP alone brought about an increase in the use of pesticides and purchase of seeds

• CGP and LFSSP jointly contributed to a big reduction in purchase of seeds

Results – Consumption

• CGP alone had little or no impact on consumption from own-production. Impacts were large for purchases, especially for the unconstrained

• With the introduction of LFSSP and the extra year of transfers, however, households receiving cash consumed more vegetables, home produced meat and dairy goods

• Interestingly, one year later with the LFSSP there was no change among the unconstrained but reductions in purchases (notably vegetables) for the constrained.

Impacts on labor supply

• After two years of CGP, substantially no effects.

• With three years of CGP and LFSSP, substitution of labor allocation from wage labor to on-farm activities.

• A shift from occasional agricultural wage labor to own farm would be considered welfare enhancing

More on labor supply

• Large increase in work activities undertaken by females, especially young girls

• Younger girls and older boys also increased the time spent assisting in non-farm business operations

• Substantially no impacts on adults labor supply

• Some caution: survey rounds correspond to the winter season aligned with winter school holidays

Conclusions -1-

• Positive effects of the combined programs on homestead gardening and productive agricultural activities

• Impacts differ considerably based on demographic nature of the household:

a) CGP alone achieve some (limited) outcomes for households with labor capacity

b) It takes additional resources and the LFSSP to impact families with limited labor supply

Conclusions -2-

• Increase in children’s labor time (especially younger girls) which may come :

a) from increased homestead gardening activities (the LFSP)

b) from increased agricultural and non-farm enterprise activities (additional CGP benefits)

• Future research (analysis and data collection) to analyze how this labor substitution influences other important social protection functions, such as schooling and health outcomes.

New research on the CGP evaluation

1) Gender differentiated impacts of the CGP on child schooling, labor and time-use.

2) Heterogeneous responses to CGP on agricultural production

References From Protection to Production Project

http://www.fao.org/economic/PtoP

PtoP Report on the Lesotho Child Grant Programme and Linking Food Security to Social Protection Programme (http://bit.ly/1G678CM)

Full list of authors:

Josh Dewbre, Silvio Daidone, Benjamin Davis, Borja Miguelez, Ousmane Niang, and Luca Pellerano

Thank you!