Research Proposal for A Ph D in Agriculture Economics.docx - Copy PDF

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Research Proposal for A PhD in Agriculture Economics `` Kennias Sarireni`` Title: Analysing Scaling Up Potential for Community Group Saving and Lending (CGSL) Mechanisms in Rural Agricultural systems in Manicaland Province, Zimbabwe. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.0 Introduction This study seeks to presents detailed qualitative and quantitative information of CGSL on rural agriculture development. The government and most financial institutions have failed rural farmers in financing their agriculture initiatives over the years. The currently available funding from government and other rural agricultural development practioners are hand outs hence they are not sustainable. Most NGOs and other non profit organisation in rural development have come up with a new innovation i.e. the CGSL- a self funding initiative. Self funding empowers the rural dwellers to make their choices and participate more on the innovation platform and it also bring a sense of ownership of the initiative. The currently available support does not give them freedom to choice since some are provided in the form of already purchased inputs and implements. The research is mainly going to focus on factors affecting decision of investing in rural agriculture after participating in CGSL, the interaction of various stakeholders on this innovation platform while assisting with extension services and how best these can be used to scale up the potential of CGSL. This analysis helps to provide a better understanding of the fundamental stakeholder interactive networks and arrangements. It further enables stakeholders involved in rural development to unpack the opportunities and barriers that exist in functioning and scaling up of this potentially beneficial innovation. This will ultimately form the basis for establishing a sustainable strategic framework and plan to improve; rural agriculture infrastructure and implements, the volume, quality and value of agricultural produce produced and marketed in Zimbabwe. The chapter presents the study background, statement of the problem, justification of embarking on the research, research questions and research objectives.

1.1 Background Since time immemorial agriculture has consistently created jobs and sustained families and communities. Agriculture sector is a catalyst sector for most sectors of the economy if not all. The food security of rural farmers and urban dwellers relies mainly on rural agriculture since most commercial farmers concentrate on high value cash crops. According to Biyam S. T (2013), Zimbabwe’s agricultural potential has thus always hinged on a few factors the most notable one has been the demographic influence of a dominant rural population of people who derive their livelihood from agriculture and other related rural economic activities. Malaba .S (2014) noted that manufacturing sector in Zimbabwe has been largely agro based of which the strong linkage reflected in the financial and banking sector. Post independence government through the Public

Sector Investment Program did major investment in rural agriculture development when irrigation and dams were constructed country wide in most rural areas. These have since worn out and siltation in most water bodies is an eyesore. Zimbabwe’s agrarian policies are pro poor and focuses on developing rural agriculture but the situation on the ground shows otherwise. Rural communal farmers suppose to be beneficiaries of huge sums of money that the government always set aside to develop its agricultural infrastructure and meet the farming needs for a sustainable rural agriculture development. The assistance that the rural farmers get from government and other rural agriculture development stakeholders is now hand outs due to the prevailing economic conditions. Most of the rural agriculture finance schemes benefit the urban dwellers as most of the inputs end up in the urban markets like the Mbare Musika and Mutare Agricultural Market. Corruption, nepotism, political influences are associated with the distribution and allocation of the inputs. The banks in Zimbabwe are closing their operations due to failure and corruption as well poor good governance has been cited as the most contributing factors. The rural farmers in Zimbabwe face food insecurity due to inadequate funding support. If goods are not imported in Zimbabwe, the people will buy food at very high costs since the costs of food production is very high, as there are few agricultural resources to sustain food production and security (Mandedu 2007). The failure by government and financial institutions to sponsor the rural farmer has exposed the rural farmers to pretenders of rural community development. For the past two decade, the country experienced the advent of some farming bodies besides the Commercial Farmers Union and the Zimbabwe Farmers Union. These organisations are offering extension services which are also a major link in rural agriculture development and in turn heavily tax the rural farmers for the services they offer. Commodity based extension is on the increase with charges contained in the input package; meaning that even those who have not access the extension service are to be charged by buying the input. Farmer groups (CGSL) have been advocated for to increase extension contact. However farmers in these groups are finding an opportunity of putting their finances together for the purpose of increasing its value through lending it among member groups and the trusted members of the community. The borrowed amount accumulates some interest agreed in the group. Upon sharing their money, rural farmers decide on what to use their money on. The major target area is in farming where rural dwellers value livestock and farm implements as their major savings and investment. Apart from saving money and increase the extension contact, the groups help in fighting parallel extension whereby farmer union bodies, NGO, AGRITEX and seed houses among the list would offers extension at the same time. Farmers would then choose the organisation to attend to and thereby resulting in farmers of the same locality to have different information and knowledge. The CGSL meeting enables all organisations and individual in community development to aggregate for a common role. Farmers are able to buy their inputs and other farming accessories in bulk. Rural farmers in the past, before introduction of rural farmers group has been highly disadvantaged since they were the only ones in the marketing

chain who buy in retail and sell at producer price after harvest. Farmers in groups have a huge purchasing power and they can buy in bulk armed with a big bargaining power.

This present research seeks to establish the impact of the community group saving and lending on rural agriculture development. the fact that farmer`s saving are accruing interest and later on share the money or use the money in groups, there is need to measure and evaluate the degree to which the farmer groups are investing towards the development of agriculture and its related infrastructure. The use of their funds to develop rural agriculture need to be measured due to the fact that the initiative attracts even those who are not actively involved in crop production and animal rearing. 1.2 Problem statement Inputs meant for rural agriculture development assistance are finding their way in markets centres which are close to Grain Marketing Board (GMB) and are sold to rural farmers at high prices. During and before multiple currency in Zimbabwe, financial institution were closing down their operations living rural agriculture with no borrowing possibilities in addition the situation is further burdened by lack of bank acceptable collateral securities. A greater proportion of rural dwellers are food insecure and the ratio of farmer extension contact is very low. Therefore the need to harness the availed opportunities by CGSL and increase house holds food security.

1.3 Justification of the study Since it was advocated for, five years back, community group saving and lending need to be given direction and scaled up based on the fact that some rural people joining these groups are not real farmers and some shift their attention from investing in rural agriculture to any other things. Self finance approaches is the best way to go due to the out look of Zimbabwe`s economy. The economy of Zimbabwe doesn’t show any sign of quick recovery and therefore harnessing self financing development initiatives is the way to achieve sustainable development. This research is going to provide a better understanding of the fundamental aspects necessary when running self funding projects in rural communities. Based on this, it also aids in providing a framework for the development of a strategic plan to improve CGSL club members to invest in sustainable rural agricultural development so as to be food secure. Practioners in rural community development are going to be a recipient of this research project thus applying some of its parameters on approaches of rural agriculture financing. Rural community agriculture is very important to its locals, urban population, other production and processing industry as well as the nation at large. Sustainable development of rural

agriculture through self financing is therefore paramount to the nation at large so the research is going to provide basic foundation and successful remedy on poverty alleviation and welfare of rural farmers. This research is going to be helpful to the government and other rural communities on articulating and preventing down fall of rural development initiatives. By considering the outcome of this research, government funds and donor funds are going to yield fruitful results as far as rural agriculture development is concerned thereby offloading the burdens which is upon government of food importation and subsidises farmers. The research is going to provide an intervention model approach to self funding of rural development in Manicaland which can be replicated in other provinces of Zimbabwe and world over.

1.4 Research objectives 1.4.1 Overall objective The overall objective of the research is to find ways of Scaling up Community Group Saving and Lending (CGSL) so as to have a food secure rural community and reduce high level of information asymmetry among community members of the same locality. 1.4.2 Specific Objectives The study specifically seeks to: 1. To establish the extent to which the CGSL influence sustainable agriculture development in Manicaland. 2. To establish and document various interventions and strategies that can be employed to make CGSL contribute significantly to sustainable rural agriculture development in Manicaland. 3. To identify different stakeholders and their interaction on the CGSL platform. 4. To identify factors that affects the decision to invest in agriculture among rural community dwellers who participate inCGSL. 1.5 Research Questions 1. What extent does CGSL influence sustainable agriculture development in Manicaland? 2. What are various interventions and strategies that can be employed to make CGSL contribute significantly to sustainable rural agriculture development in Manicaland? 3. Who are stakeholders and their interaction on the CGSL platform? 4. Which factors affect the decision to invest in agriculture among rural community dwellers? 1.6 Conceptual framework The framework in Figure 1 guided the objectives, review of literature and the design of the methods for data collection. Figure 1: Conceptual framework

Adapted from Wabwoba et al., (2013) The adapted conceptual framework shows a number of factors that affects the decision to invest in sustainable agriculture developmental. The socio economic, political and institutional factors were identified and these have been used to guide this research project. Also some interventions and strategies can be used to stimulate CGSL Club members to invest in sustainable agriculture.

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.0 Introduction Literature from other related study will to be documented in this chapter under topics including sustainable rural agriculture development, stakeholder interaction in rural agriculture development, funding of rural agriculture, the impact of information asymmetry in rural community development and characteristics and forms that leads to sustainability.

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 3.0 Introduction This chapter pays particular attention to the methods that is going to be used to gather and analyze data relevant to the present study. The chapter begins by identifying attributes of the study area on location, crops and the stakeholders involved in the dominant community projects that have been implemented by the NGOs. Sample selection methods that are going to be used in the study are also presented as well as the data collection methods.

3.1 Description of Study Area The study area of focus is Manicaland province, which houses seven rural districts with 3 districts under study i.e. Mutare, Chipinge and Buhera. Majority of the people in the chosen districts survive through farming although diamond has been discovered in Mutare district. The province is endowed with gold deposits and the area is composed of small communal farmers, commercial farmers and small scale commercial farmers. The research is going to focus on communal farmers only. The study area is characterised by all the farming region of Zimbabwe thus agro region I, IIa, IIb, III, IV and V (Whiteside 1998). While majority of the farmers are located in agro-region IV and V, which are characterised by poor sandy soils and erratic rains and rainfall rarely exceeds 400mm per annum. All year round farming is impossible in most communal areas under study except when using irrigation which commonly suffers from lack of sustained water support that can stretch to the next rainy season. The study area is composed of animal husbandry, crop production and plantation.

Sampling and Sample Size The sample is going to be selected in multiple stages. Purposive sampling is going to be used to identify the CGSL in the selected 3 districts. Non probabilistic sampling (snowballing) is to be used to identify 20 CGSL per district and on reaching this number, the process will be terminated. This is due to the fact that there are no readily available records on CGSL. As such, it will be imperative to identify the starting point who is the lead farmer, with the help of government extension workers. This technique is advantageous in that CGSL know each other and it reduces the costs and time of data collection. The study will result in having two units of analysis i.e. CGSL and member group or individual participants in the group. The members participating in the group will be chosen at random from the identified groups.

3.3 Data Collection

All data are the consequence of one person asking questions of someone else (Jacob 1984: 43). This study will use both primary and secondary data sources. Existing data from the NGOs, AGRITEX and other stakeholders are going to be used. For summarising and analysis of the data, SPSS (Software Package for Social Sciences), and Microsoft Excel is going to be used.

3.3.1 Primary Data Primary data is data that is collected at the source by means of surveys, observation or experimentation. This is done for the “primary” purpose of the present study. Questionnaires for primary data collection are to be personally administered to farmers in the CGSL. Triangulation is going to be done through a Focus Group Discussion which is going to involve AGRITEX staff, NGO staff and community leaders in the study area. This will be used as a follow up to the individual questions asked using questionnaires.

3.3.2 Secondary Data Secondary data is any information collected by someone else other than its present user. Secondary data may be cheaper and easier to get as compared to primary data which has to be collected and analyzed before use. The main weakness arises when the source is not reliable. The recoded information and data are going to be used to affirm the study with the already done. It will also guide the researcher with information needs for each study area and what has been done so far.

3.3.3 Qualitative and Quantitative Data Both qualitative and quantitative data are going to be used for this research. Quantitative data are measures of values or counts usually expressed as numbers. The data answers questions about how many; how much; or how often. Quantitative data are generated from measurable attributes of a population and data can be analyzed statistically, and thus more rigorous assessments of the data are possible. Qualitative data are measures of 'types' and may be represented by a name, symbol, or a number code or it is data about categorical variables (e.g. what type). Qualitative data is information which does not present itself in numerical form and is descriptive, appearing mostly in conversational or narrative form e.g. non-measurable attributes such as the marital status of a farmer, socio economic status, religious and preference to use money gained from CGSL in agriculture development.

3.3.4 Questionnaires

A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. Although they are often designed for statistical analysis of the responses, this is not always the case. The questionnaire is going to be pre-tested prior to the study to realign questions with the comprehension capabilities of the respondents.

3.3.5 Focus Group Discussion Focus group discussion is a qualitative data collection approach. The group is limited to between 7 and 10 participants for effective discussions. A conducive environment for open minded talking, in a constructive manner is to be created. The researcher is going to monitor inclination towards group-shift and group-think during the discussions.

3.3.6 Observations An observation is a systematic process of data collection. Non participant and unstructured observations is going to be used since it is difficult to hide the identity of the researcher in an area where he has worked for some time.

3.4 Ethical Considerations Ethics govern all forms of research. The essence is to create an acceptable relationship between the researcher and the respondents in a mutually beneficial way. The following key aspects are to be considered in the study area. 1. Right to free consent. Participants were not pressured to participate in this study. 2. Right to informed consent. Participants are to be provided with sufficient information on the purposes of the study in order to make decisions on whether to participate or not. 3. Right to confidentiality. The researcher undertook to limit access to information obtained from or about the participants. 4. Right to privacy. Research participants had the right to withhold information which they felt uncomfortable to disclose. 5. Right to anonymity. The researcher undertook not to identify specific data with specific individuals

3.5 Data Analysis SPSS (Software Package for Social Sciences) and Excel computer programs are going to be used. Data from the data collection tools are to be coded into these software for summarization. The findings are to be presented in tables and graphs for it to make a meaningful sense to the general public.

3.5.2

Logit Regression Model

Generally a person can make option with available funds. For the purpose of this research, the decision of one using his/her funds from CGSL on agriculture development or on other things is binary. Whether a farmer/group decides to prepare for the next season, increase animal herd, upgrade farming infrastructure or buying new implements is all agriculture investment and development. If a person or group decides to buy food stuff, paying school fees and venture into buying and selling, it’s another decision. This results in a yes or no response for the dependent variable (decision of investment). This becomes a binary dependent variable which follows under logistic regress...