May 2022 TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE: AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION GENDER INNOVATION LAB AND INVESTMENT IN CÔTE D’IVOIRE The Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) Authors: Aletheia Donald, Markus Goldstein and Léa Rouanet 1 conducts impact evaluations of development interventions in KEY MESSAGES Sub-Saharan Africa, seeking to generate evidence on • Increasing agricultural productivity and investment is critical to reducing how to close gender gaps in poverty, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture remains the earnings, productivity, assets, dominant income-generating activity. In Côte d’Ivoire, rubber is a key export and agency. The GIL team is crop, however aging plantations have dampened the crop productivity in recent currently working on over 80 years. Its production is also highly male-dominated, with women making up impact evaluations in more than only a small share of producers. 25 countries with the aim of building an evidence base with • One potential way to promote investment and improve the efficiency of lessons for the region. household farm production is to empower women as co-managers and facilitate the coordination of production decisions within the family. To test this The impact objective of GIL is approach, we worked together with the Ivorian rubber professional association increasing take-up of effective APROMAC to offer farmers subsidized rubber seedlings combined with either policies by governments, an individual training or one that included their spouses. development organizations, and the private sector • Farmers that received the individual training experienced a decrease in to address the underlying harvest and yields as labor was re-routed to intensive upfront planting and causes of gender inequality care activities for young, non-producing rubber seedlings. However, the wives’ in Africa, particularly in terms participation in the couples’ training group allowed households to have higher of women’s economic and levels of investment and to cushion this drop in production, allowing those social empowerment. The Lab households to maintain pre-program production levels. aims to do this by producing and delivering a new body • The couples performed better due to improved management and a reduction of evidence and developing a in traditional gendered divisions of labor. The wives’ presence and participation compelling narrative, geared in the creation of an action plan for rubber cultivation increased their visibility towards policymakers, on what and planned responsibility in rubber production, which in turn improved works and what does not work the efficiency of household farm production and promoted higher levels of in promoting gender equality. investment at lower cost. The authors would like to thank Gaëlle Conille for preparing the policy brief. 1  https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/africa-gender-innovation-lab CONTEXT were assigned to receive the training with their spouse. Agriculture is the dominant income-generating activity in The remaining farmers were assigned to a comparison Sub-Saharan Africa, but agricultural productivity remains group (i.e., to not receive any seedlings or training). low in the region. Investment in agricultural production is The curriculum of the training consisted of three parts: often costly for poor households, particularly for crops that take several years to mature. 1. A gender reflection, prompting couples to reflect on their division of labor, asset ownership and Rubber is particularly important in Côte d’Ivoire—Africa’s sharing of decision-making and income within the top rubber exporter—though productivity is dampened household, by the old age of current plantations and the use of non- improved seedling varieties. Rubber production requires 2. A standard 3-day agricultural extension training considerable investment: it takes six years to start related to rubber cultivation, where farmers were producing latex, but the plants require significant upfront taught how to choose the right plot, prepare the care during the first few years. land, space trees at planting, apply inputs, weed and intercrop, Rubber is also a male-dominated export crop, with women making up only a small share of rubber 3. The creation of an action plan, where farmers producers—meaning they are excluded from important planned out the management of the first two decisions regarding rubber cultivation within most years of cultivation. households. This exclusion from important planning In the couples’ training group, attendance was mandatory decisions may potentially lead to lower investment and for both the lead farmer and his spouse throughout the inefficient production. 3-day training (including the action plan portion). In This experiment took place in the context of the Côte the individual training group, the farmer assisted in the d’Ivoire Agricultural Support Program (PSAC), a World training and action plan completion by himself, with the Bank funded project aiming to increase rubber productivity wife only attending for the gender reflection portion. in the country. Among other interventions, the project subsidized a high-yield variety of rubber seedlings that FIGURE 1: INTERVENTION DESIGN was delivered to smallholder farmers across four regions in the south (Gboklé, Grand Ponts, La Mé and Sud- Individual Couples Comoé) and four regions in the center of Côte d’Ivoire Training Training (Haut-Sassandra, Iffou, Moronou and N’Zi). Agricultural Skills WHAT WE DID In the context of the World Bank PSAC project and working together with the Ivorian rubber professional association APROMAC, we innovated on APROMAC’s standard agricultural extension training to address the Gender twin problems of low agricultural productivity and low Sensitization* participation of women in rubber production. In 2016, farmers were assigned to receive two variants of the standard agricultural extension training, through randomization at the community level. Among 2,500 Action Plan* eligible male farmers2 who applied to receive ~600 (2 hectares worth) subsidized high-yield variety rubber seedlings from the program, 30 percent were assigned to receive the training by themselves, and another 30 percent * Innovations we developed To be eligible, farmers needed to have less than two hectares of rubber cultivated pre-program and be willing to increase cultivation. 2  Two years after the training—in June to July 2018—we FIGURE 2: INVESTMENT IN RUBBER PLANTING collected data on a broad range of agricultural and other economic outcomes, as well as on farmers’ agricultural knowledge, their perception of their spouse’s knowledge, and variables capturing women’s decision-making in agriculture. 20% WHAT WE FOUND While farmers in both the individual and couples’ training groups invested more in rubber production, those receiving the individual training experienced Farmers in the couples’ training group a decrease in harvest and yields. Households in the planted 20% more trees than those individual training group planted the improved rubber in the individual training group. seedlings, but due to the influx of young (and thus non- producing) trees that require significant upfront care, they witnessed a 26% drop in total harvest and 18% drop in saw no change in the area of cocoa plots cultivated. They yield. Receiving the seedling subsidy with an individual also intensified farming overall, decreasing their fallow training also led to a significant decrease of 0.36 hectares area by 0.16 hectares (a 35.5% decrease compared to in cocoa plot area3 (a 10.8% decrease compared to the the control group). control mean). Farmers in the individual training group thus compensated for the effort of planting and caring for How did this happen? Households in which the wife new rubber seedlings by decreasing harvesting among was invited to the extension training increased their producing crops (mostly older rubber trees). labor hours and agricultural input use. Households in the The wives’ participation in the couples’ training couples’ training group worked an average of 17% more group offsets drops in harvest and productivity. In hours per week per rubber plot hectare compared to the the group with wife participation, households planted 20% individual training group, with increases in labor hours more rubber seedlings and were able to maintain pre- for both husbands and wives. They also increased the program levels of agricultural production on older trees proportion of rubber plots using phytosanitary products and other crops. For example, couples’ training farmers by 14 percentage points (or 47%) and the proportion FIGURE 3: LABOR AND NON-LABOR INPUTS Labor Inputs Phytosanitary and Chemical Fertilizer Use 25 50 ** 45 *** Number of hours worked per week per rubber plot hectare 20 40 * Percentage of plots 35 15 30 25 *** 10 20 ** *** 15 * 5 10 ** 5 ** 0 0 Total hours Planter hours Spouse hours Proportion of plots Proportion of plots with phyto-sanitary with chem. fert. Control Individual Couples Cocoa is the second most prevalent crop on farmers’ plots, after rubber. 3  using fertilizer by 5 percentage points (or 50%) compared to the individual training group. The increase in fertilizer also applied to cocoa plots, indicating how couples’ training households took more of a portfolio approach in their agricultural management. Couples performed better because they managed their farms more effectively through joint planning. At the planning stage, couples’ training households made a more complete action plan (with management responsibility for 40% more tasks assigned to a person rather than being left blank) and were 19% more likely to retain it in the years following the training compared to the individual training group. The wife’s presence and participation in the creation of an action plan for rubber cultivation also increased her visibility and planned responsibility in rubber production: wives were assigned management of over three times more tasks compared to households in the individual training group. In particular, we see women being assigned a large share of tasks that only men do in the individual training group. These changes in co-management on paper are related to the changes in agricultural practices we saw on the farm: couples’ training households that made women sole managers of tasks are the ones that used more labor and non-labor inputs. POLICY IMPLICATIONS AND NEXT STEPS Our study shows the economic benefits of giving women a seat at the (planning) table—providing evidence on how including women in economic management can improve the efficiency of production, allowing households to invest more at lower cost. Furthermore, our findings show that joint planning can mean better planning, leading to a more efficient allocation of tasks within teams. Policymakers may need to revise the standard approach used in the delivery of agricultural extension training. While agents tend to target one individual in the household (traditionally men), it can be more cost effective to target both spouses. In fact, the couples’ training in this study was highly cost-effective, with a total cost per household of USD 31, and an estimated return factor of 11x at the household level. Future research should test whether these results generalize to other types of crops, especially those that require less skill and duration to harvest, and food staples—where yields remain far below their potential in Sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, although the results show that including women in economic planning FOR MORE INFORMATION, can improve the efficiency of household production, the intervention did not PLEASE CONTACT lead to meaningful changes in women’s bargaining power after two years. Aletheia Donald Further work is needed to understand how to increase women’s share of adonald@worldbank.org control over household resources. Gaëlle Conille gconille@worldbank.org Photo credit: Borgarello/World Bank, Brice Delagneau, John Hogg/World Bank, Nestle 1818 H St NW Washington, DC 20433 USA This work has been funded in part by the Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality (UFGE), which is a multi-donor trust fund www.worldbank.org/africa/gil administered by the World Bank to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment through experimentation and knowledge creation to help governments and the private sector focus policy and programs on scalable solutions with sustainable outcomes. The UFGE is supported with generous contributions from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.