Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
200 D.W. BROOKS DR
ATHENS,GA 30602-5016
Performing Department
Agricultural & Applied Economics
Non Technical Summary
In Nepal, where 25% of the population lives below the poverty line (45% in rural areas), goats are an essential source of income and protein. Goats are commonly referred to as the "poor person's cow" and nearly every Nepali household owns at least a few. Recently, demand for goat meat has increased but smallholder farmers, most of whom are women, have been unable to tap into urban markets and benefit. There are a number of reasons for this. They often lack access to quality veterinary care and livestock feed, which make it difficult to produce goats that will fetch a high price. Due to the small size and isolation of their farms, they have little leverage with middlemen who often take advantage of their situation. The also lack knowledge about when and how they should sell their goats to maximize profit.In our study we propose two interventions to help remedy this situation. The first is to train additional community animal health workers to deliver much needed veterinary care in isolated communities. Importantly these will be women, making them potentially more accessible to female goat producers. The second is an SMS-based communication system that will help cooperatives organize sales to increase their leverage and get a higher price for their goats.We will evaluate the effects of these interventions on a number of outcomes including goat production, goat sales, goat revenue and profit, and empowerment over goat enterprises within the household.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
50%
Developmental
50%
Goals / Objectives
We will design, implement, and rigorously evaluate two innovative and potentially transformative interventions to improve goat value chain functionality in rural Nepal: (1) a distance learning platform that will make it easier for women to become CAHWs, and (2) an SMS-based information sharing platform that will improve cooperative efficiency and sustainability. The communication interventions will be rigorously evaluated using a randomized control trial spanning 109 Village Development Committees in 27 districts. Along with HI-N, we will work with stakeholders from government bodies such as the National Cooperatives Development Board (NCDB), the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MoAC), and the Ministry of Livestock Development (MoLD) to maximize impact by scaling up successful interventions to transform markets and increase smallholder goat producer welfare throughout Nepal.We will design, implement, and rigorously evaluate two innovative and potentially transformative interventions to improve goat value chain functionality in rural Nepal: (1) a distance learning platform that will make it easier for women to become CAHWs, and (2) an SMS-based information sharing platform that will improve cooperative efficiency and sustainability. The communication interventions will be rigorously evaluated using a randomized control trial spanning 109 Village Development Committees in 27 districts. Along with HI-N, we will work with stakeholders from government bodies such as the National Cooperatives Development Board (NCDB), the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MoAC), and the Ministry of Livestock Development (MoLD) to maximize impact by scaling up successful interventions to transform markets and increase smallholder goat producer welfare throughout Nepal.
Project Methods
We will evaluate the interventions using two separate randomized control trials.Evaluation of distance learning platform for community animal health worker trainingThe distance-learning platform for the community animal health workers will be randomized at the individual level. To obtain a representative sample of women likely to be affected by the interventions for the household survey, we will work with HI, leaders of cooperatives, and local authorities to obtain cooperative rosters, from which we will identify all goat-producing households that are members of cooperatives. From these comprehensive lists, we will draw households at random from each VDC to be included in the sample. Two rounds of survey data will be collected from the resulting sample: one before and one after the intervention. To maximize the statistical power of our evaluations, we will stratify treatment assignment using our first round of survey data. More specifically, regression models estimated using our first round of survey data will be used to identify strong predictors of our outcomes of interest. Cooperatives will be matched to one another using these same predictors, forming strata consisting of four cooperatives each. Each strata will contribute one randomly assigned cooperative to each of our three treatment arms as well as the control group. The impact of each intervention will be estimated using the two rounds of survey data in 2020.Evaluation of SMS based cooperative communication platformThere are 107 goat-producing cooperatives associated with HI-N distributed across village development communities (similar to a US county). Intervention effects will be captured using data collected through surveys of a random sample of households from cooperative rosters. Random assignment of treatments at the cooperative level will ensure that our evaluation generates impact estimates that are highly likely to be free of selection bias. If all cooperatives participate in their assigned interventions, we can directly estimate the cooperative average impact of each intervention on the entire population from which our sample of households is drawn. If compliance with assigned interventions is less than 100%, we will estimate "Intent to Treat" (ITT) effects and "Average Treatment on the Treated" (ATT) effects. ITT effects are the effect of access to an intervention regardless of actual participation rates; e.g., the average effect of being offered the weighing scales/SMS intervention on cooperatives who were offered them, regardless of uptake. ITT effects capture the average effect of making an intervention available in an environment where individuals cannot be compelled to take it up. Since cooperatives are free to use or not use the SMS and distance learning platforms when they are made available, ITT effects are highly relevant in the present case. In contrast, ATTs are the effect of an intervention on those who use it, e.g., the average impact of the scales and SMS platform on cooperatives that accept this package of interventions when it is offered to them. Because ITT and ATT estimators rely on random assignment, both are free of selection bias and internally valid, i.e. unbiased for the population from which the sample was drawn.