Cowpea Farmers Willingness to Pay for Quality Seeds in Burkina Faso

Transcription

1 Cowpea Farmers Willingness to Pay for Quality Seeds in Burkina Faso Me-Nsope, N. M., Maredia, M. K., Shupp, R. and Ilboudo, D. Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Grain Legumes

2 Outline Motivation Research objective/goal Methodology Seed BDM experimental design Preliminary results Implications

3 Motivation Increasing erratic weather and climatic conditions and effects on crop yields need for good quality seeds of improved varieties Self-pollinate crops (e.g. cowpeas) competition between grain and seed as planting material. Several factors influence the demand for good quality seeds

4 Research Goal To analyze cowpea farmers willingness to pay (WTP) for Certified, Quality declared and ownsaved or recycled cowpea seeds. Specifically: Do farmers perceive any difference in quality between the 3 types of seed? If yes, how does this translate to their WTP for these seeds? Obtain estimates of the relative premium farmers are WTP for quality seeds

5 Methodology We followed the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM, 1964) method to elicit information on how much cowpea farmers are willing to pay for Certified, QDS and recycled seeds based on their perceived/observed differences in their performance Individual farmer bids Participants bid only against themselves. BDM is incentive compatible

6 Seed BDM experimental design The Seed bidding experiment was conducted with individual farmer The experiment has two components: Farmers are shown actual seed samples (packed in 1 kg plastic bags) of certified, QDS and recycled seeds of the same variety, and asked to bid. Seeds were labeled so that farmers bid knowing which sample is which. A blind experiment: Farmers are shown photos of field plots with seed types G, L, M at the flowering and harvesting stages, and were asked to bid for each type G, L, M (Farmers were told the seed types represent certified, QDS and recycled seed, but they are not told which plot corresponds to which seed type) Endowment: Each farmer received an endowment of 1500 FCFA to purchase a one kg bag of one seed type. After the farmer completed the bidding sheet for all 6 seed types certified, QDS, recycled, G, L, M the enumerator asked the farmer to randomly pick one bag of pre-labeled and packaged seed from a bigger bag, and the label on the bottom of that seed bag was selected as the binding option for the auction A practice bidding game for soap was played prior to the seed bidding experiments and each farmer received 300 FCFA for this game.

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9 Village selection & sampling plan for BDM 4 provinces Bazega, Boulgou, Gansourgou and Zoundweogo 20 villages 16 households were surveyed Total sample size = 320 households experiments

10 Sample characteristics (N=320) VARIABLE MEAN PERCENTAGE Age 47.1 Formal education 1.7 Literacy 1.6 Household Size Gender of respondent Male 89.7 Female 10.3 Ever used /purchased certified seeds of any crop Yes 74.7 No 25.3 Used Certified cowpea seeds Yes 67.2 Used Certified maize seeds Yes 70.9

11 PRELIMINARY RESULTS

12 Farmer s rating of different seed types Percentage of farmers who rated each seed type as BEST Certified QDS Recycled/OS

13 BDM Experiments Average bidding price (CFA/kg) for different seed types (N=320) ,000 1, CFA 1058 CFA 653 CFA The pink line is the average purchase price for a kilogram of cowpea grain reported by farmers in the sample. The price is 396 FCFA/kg. mean of Certified mean of Recycled mean of QDS

14 Price of certified seed as percentage of price of recycled seed BDM Experiments WTP premium for certified seed over recycled seed (N=319) % 10% 30% 50% 60% 80% 90% 100% Percentage of farmers

15 BDM Experiments

16 Conclusions and Implications Results suggests that farmers perceive the quality attributes associated with each type of seed and are willing to pay a premium for quality seeds IF AVAILABLE. There is a demand for quality cowpea seeds. However, access to these seeds remain an important challenge for cowpea farmers in Burkina Faso. Need to assess the size of this demand. Need for investments in the cowpea seed value chain to increase the availability of quality seeds seed breeding, seed multiplication and further production, seed certification or quality control and seed distribution.

17 Conclusions and Implications Results also suggests that the number of farmers willing to pay a premium price for quality seed declines as the price of seed increases Need for interventions to reduce the cost of seed production, thereby reducing the premium price for quality seeds, and increasing the number of farmers using quality seeds.

18 Next steps Test the double blind methodology for eliciting farmers WTP based on their perceptions of seed quality that are formed by looking at pictures (L,M,G) rather than actual seeds. Compare farmers WTP for quality seeds when the identities are unknown (based solely on visual and observable quality differences) versus when the identify of the seed is known. Econometrically model the determinants of WTP for quality seeds in Burkina Faso.

19 THANK YOU