The continued development of Liberia’s agricultural sector is crucial to Liberia’s economic growth and food security. A focus on smallholder farmers helps to ensure pro-poor growth; over 70% of Liberia’s population is involved in farming and the vast majority of this population practice cultivation at the subsistence level, utilizing traditional techniques. The Smallholder Agricultural Productivity Enhancement and Commercialization project (SAPEC) aims to improve the productivity, income and nutritional outcomes of beneficiary farmers in 12 of Liberia’s 15 counties. SAPEC provides farmers with agricultural technologies, constructs and rehabilitates infrastructure to support value-chains and market linkages, as well is working to improve the institutional capacity of the Ministry of Agriculture and associated research institutions. The impact evaluation focuses most directly through the most rigorous methods on the input delivery component. SAPEC’s design incorporates a focus on women, youth and the disabled to better integrate these groups into the agricultural sector and improve their capacity. Given Liberia’s relatively low life expectancy and high youth population (42% below age 15; LISGIS 2011), it is particularly important to encourage youth participation in agriculture. Declining youth participation in the agriculture sector across Africa prompts concerns that if youth are the most open to new technologies, programs promoting new agricultural methods and varieties may struggle to convince farmers to try these new methods unless they can recruit young farmers.
We propose to study the impact of seed and tool distribution on the take-up of modern farming inputs and the use of productivity enhancing tools, thereby resulting in higher agricultural yields and improved nutritional outcomes, as measured by dietary diversity scores. The wide geographic scope of SAPEC and its focus on smallholder farmers offer a unique opportunity to generate data that can be more robustly extrapolated to the wider Liberian population. We will use data from a 2016 registration of Liberian farmers to randomly select 1,000 Liberian farmers from 100 randomly selected communities in Liberian districts serviced by SAPEC.
Using a randomization at multiple levels, we seek to determine whether the provision of 91%-subsidized improved seeds, tools, and fertilizer promote the take-up of modern farming inputs and improve diets. We will also study whether particular beneficiary sub-groups (by age and gender) are more likely to respond to SMS messaging with an agricultural focus and whether small adjustments to the content of these messages can result in relatively greater improvements in take-up by youth.