Disseminating Innovative Resources and Technologies to Smallholders (DIRTS) in Northern Region, Ghana

The DIRTS project will use a randomized controlled trial to measure the impact of improved flows of extension information, access to agricultural input packages, and rainfall index insurance on agricultural intensification, specifically the use of fertilizers and improved seeds.

To further examine the importance of weather-related risk to farm investment, all farmers in our study will be able to purchase a commercial rainfall index insurance product, developed by the Ghana Insurers Association (GIA). In 2014 we will offer free insurance to a randomly-selected subset of our sample, and actuarially-fair insurance to everyone else. Based on past experience, we expect take-up to be at or near 100% for the free insurance, and low for actuarially-fair insurance. We anticipate a strong investment response to the free insurance. In year 2, given that communities now have experience with the insurance, we expect that there will be strong demand at actuarially fair and higher prices. We will also experiment with marketing by local notables, to see if this increases demand.

Second, to test the importance of unsure, untimely and costly access to agricultural inputs, DIRTS will make commercial fertilizer and improved seeds available to selected communities at different points during the year instead of just prior to land preparation. These inputs will be sold at market price by existing agro-input dealers, who are based in the districts. The project will facilitate linkages between these suppliers and the communities and subsidize transport.

Third, to test the importance of imperfect farmer knowledge of farming best practices, randomly selected communities will be provided with more intensive extension through a Community Extension Agent (CEA). CEAs will be based in their own communities and will use Android phones to deliver standardized weekly extension messages, and will use mobile technology (pre-loaded database) to offer appropriate and time-sensitive advice to the farmers.

For this study, 3240 households in 162 communities will be randomized into one of four treatment groups: insurance and extension; insurance and agricultural inputs; insurance, extension, and agricultural inputs, and insurance only. Two main evaluation tools will be used to study DIRTS households: comprehensive annual surveys to collect household and plot level data, and weekly tracking of household labor surveys during the agricultural season.

Field work for DIRTS will run from January 2014 to March 2016 in 9 districts in northern Ghana. During the study period, project staff will use social media outlets and meetings with key stakeholders in the insurance and agricultural sectors to disseminate technical knowledge, focus group discussion results, and preliminary findings. At the end of the study period, local and international dissemination conferences will be held to publicize results.

The long-term goal of the DIRTS project is to increase the number of smallholder farmers who can access useful agricultural products and services, with consequent reduction of food insecurity for the region and higher levels of farmers' income. Ghana is classified by ESRC as a lower middle income country, but rural poverty remains a serious problem, especially in the northern regions. In 2006, 52 percent of Ghanaians lived under the poverty line of US$2 per day, and residents of rural northern Ghana were two to three times more likely to live in poverty than the average Ghanaian. The typical northern smallholder owns less than ten acres of land, cultivates maize and groundnuts, may miss meals during lean seasons, maintains very limited liquid savings and faces the risk of weather shocks. Recent work by SARI and UDS estimates that farmers in northern Ghana are achieving just 30 percent of potential crop yields. Increasing agricultural yields and profitability through improved extension, input provision, and insurance access is an important first step towards reducing rural poverty levels in northern Ghana and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.

DIRTS' activities are expected to be of interest to national and regional policymakers, development practitioners, insurance companies, agricultural input suppliers, and funders in the following ways:

1. Testing the overall effectiveness of extension services, input provision, and rainfall index insurance in the Northern Ghanaian context. Identifying the agricultural policies which do or don't work will allow policymakers to better target their scarce resources towards effective policies. Stakeholders who may be interested in this work include policymakers from regional ministries of agriculture, development practitioners, and funding organizations.

2. Testing new models of extension delivery. DIRTS will seek to overcome the constraints of infrequent government AEA visits by supplementing government-provided AEA services with CEAs using mobile technologies. Through DIRTS, MoFA will be in a good position to set up and bring the community extension agent program to scale, while other regional ministries of agriculture could pursue similar community-based extension programs in partnership with technology providers such as the Grameen Foundation AppLab. The CEA model is expected to be attractive to MoFA and other ministries of agriculture because the use of CEAs is less expensive than paying for AEA salary and transport to remote communities, and the mobile content can be updated remotely at any time.

3. Potential for commercialization and scalability of existing products & services. Information collected on the demand for insurance, extension services and intensified agricultural inputs as well as the profitability of each will inform the potential and scope of privatization for each component.

During the two-year study period, project staff will use social media outlets and meetings with key stakeholders in the insurance and agricultural sectors to disseminate technical knowledge, focus group discussion results, and preliminary findings. At the end of the study period, local and international dissemination conferences will be held to publicize results to the above-mentioned stakeholders.