Lisez en français avec Google Translator.
For the past few weeks myAgro job candidates have completed baseline surveys to gather data on the communities we might work in. In addition to agricultural and livestock questions, we also included Grameen’s Mali PPI tool, specifically designed for Mali. The PPI is a baseline tool made up of 10 easily verifiable factors that tell us the likelihood that someone is earning income below various poverty lines (National poverty lines, $1.25/day, $2.50/day, etc.).
It’s a little early to say where the villages we are surveying will fall (we need to do more surveys to get an accurate score), but to date, we’ve gathered some really interesting household data. Of the families surveyed:
- 80% have 5 or more children
- 70% have total family sizes of 15 or more
- 60% have over 5 hectares (10 acres) of land
- 45% use fertilizer to increase production – 90% of those who do use fertilizer are part of the Mali Government’s cotton program
- 100% use traditional seed for cereals
- 100% said they’re eating less right now (during hunger/planting season)
Another really interesting part of the survey was when it came time to discuss savings. Since myAgro uses a savings model, this is of particular interest to us so we can know what’s in place already before introducing myAgro to farmers. Across the board, when asked if they save, farmers answered “No” – even women who were in savings groups that met every week to save answered no!
However, when asked in a later question, “What do you save for?”, farmers quickly ran through a list of items they save for. And most items – like saving for a cow, emergencies and parties, require putting money aside at least more than once to accumulate a big enough sum.
What does this mean? Well, we’re still trying to figure it out and we’re starting to ask farmers to tease out the nuance. It could be that farmers feel that the word “savings” doesn’t apply to them when they’re saving less than $1-2 a week. If this is true, myAgro will have to adopt some more farmer-friendly terms so that working with myAgro seems as easy and doable as the other ways they currently put money aside to purchase big ticket items.
It is also striking that amongst the long list of items farmers do save for, fertilizer and seed was not one of them. Developing a stellar marketing approach to make the myAgro package desirable will be key. Based on the stats above, it looks like we’ll have to make the case for 1) using fertilizer 2) using better quality seeds and 3) savings (without calling it savings!) to pay for myAgro inputs ahead of time.
Local maize plot in Bogala Village. Notice how much the maize varies in size and the poor germination rates (empty places). We'll set up germination trials to show the difference when farmers plant certified seed!
