Improving Agricultural Productivity and Resilience with Satellite and Cellphone Imagery to Scale Climate-Smart Crop Insurance (Cultiaf-2)

 

In many low-income countries, agricultural producers face significant climate-related risks that undermine the resilience of their production and food supply systems. Agricultural insurance can help mitigate some of these risks, enabling farmers to increase farm investments, incomes, and food and nutritional security. This paper conducts a literature review to evaluate the extent to which agricultural insurance is gender-inclusive and gender-responsive (i.e., reaches and benefits both women and men), and whether there is potential for such insurance to empower women or even become gender-transformative. We find that existing agricultural insurance products are designed and delivered in ways that limit reach and benefits of insurance for women. Empirical research has focused less on the question whether insurance empowers women, let alone whether it has a transformative effect by changing institutional norms that perpetuate gender inequities. We present a case study of a crop insurance program in Kenya to discuss how agricultural insurance, if adequately designed, can have stronger impacts on gender-related outcomes. Empirically testing these approaches to agricultural insurance design is a key priority for future research.

Too often, smallholder farmers suffer severe financial consequences from extreme weather events, pests, and disease; and climate change will increase the frequency at which natural hazards occur. This project note describes the findings from a research program in Kenya that aims to design, implement, and evaluate more complete risk management solutions; in particular, a solution that promotes stress-tolerant crops and varieties using an innovative picture-based crop insurance (PBI) product. The note first describes this intervention and the study designed to measure its impacts, followed by an overview of key findings at midline. This will include insights on the scalability of picture-based claims settlement, opportunities for more gender-responsive program design, and demand for the insurance product. We conclude by describing key challenges faced whilst implementing these solutions and providing an outlook for the future.

Climate change has exacerbated the frequency and severity of extreme weather events affecting the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers across Sub-Saharan Africa. The formal seed sector is an important entry point to help farmers better manage these risks, as it provides access to high-quality certified seeds of improved stress-tolerant varieties. The challenge, however, is that the formal market is not always inclusive and is more accessible to middle- or largescale (and often male) farmers. Smaller farmers (often female) are more likely to obtain seeds from informal sources. This creates social inequities in distribution channels for quality seeds. ACRE Africa provides agricultural insurance products as part of a wholistic integrated risk management approach, with the aim of de-risking the farmer at all stages of production. ACRE engages champion farmers in their activities as part of their efforts to increase farmers’ access to quality seeds, and to diversify champion farmer revenue streams. Using their social networks, champions can form a bridge between informal, semi-formal and formal systems, providing both women and men with better access to quality seeds.

This project note describes a field experiment evaluating the use of gender edutainment to increase smallholder farmers’ awareness of existing gender biases, the repercussions of intimate partner violence for creating an open space to share knowledge and insights within the household, and the importance of intrahousehold joint decision-making to help close gender (social) gaps. The experiment was implemented in the context of an agricultural risk management program in Kenya that aims to increase smallholder households’ resilience in the face of climate change.

Agricultural services are fundamental to driving agricultural development. In designing these services, it is critical to consider gender roles from the outset to identify effective pathways for change and to avoid exacerbating gender inequality. In this project note, we analyze the functioning of this champion farmer model using a case study in Kenya. We seek to assess gender-based barriers that champion farmers may face in providing agricultural services. Specifically, the case study provides insights into opportunities that drive champion farmers to start their entrepreneurial activities to deliver agricultural services, the barriers that they face in carrying out these activities, and the extent to which farmers in their communities see them as social influencers.