Attachment Report
- 1. LILONGWE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES STUDENT ATTACHMENT REPORT ON HOUSEHOLD ANNUAL BENEFICIARY AGRICULTURAL OUTCOME SURVEY - INVC CONDUCTED FROM 8TH SEPTEMBER TO 1ST OCTOBER 2014 IN MCHINJI, LILONGWE, DEDZA, NTCHEU, BALAKA, MACHINGA AND MANGOCHI DISTRICTS COMPILED BY CHRISTOPHER CHIKOWI (BSc in Agricultural Economics) SUBMITTED TO INTERNSHIP SUPERVISOR: MAPEMBA PhD E-MAIL: L_MAPEMBA@YAHOO.COM FACULTY OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND APPLIED ECONOMICS Bunda College of Agriculture P.O Box 219 Lilongwe Malawi OCTOBER, 2014
- 2. i TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS...............................................................................................................................i ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS .....................................................................................................ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ...........................................................................................................................iii 1.0 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................1 1.1 Summary of the report ........................................................................................................................1 2.0 BACKGROUND ....................................................................................................................................1 2.1 Program Overview..............................................................................................................................1 2.2 Programme Impact..............................................................................................................................2 3.0 ACTIVITIES, LESSONS AND CHALLENGES FACED ....................................................................2 3.1 Questionnaire......................................................................................................................................2 3.2 Sampling .............................................................................................................................................3 3.3 Data Collection ...................................................................................................................................4 3.4 Data Entry...........................................................................................................................................5 3.4.1 Census and Survey Processing System 5.0..................................................................................5 3.5 Data Management ...............................................................................................................................6 4.0 EXPERIENCE ........................................................................................................................................6 5.0 RECOMMENDATION ..........................................................................................................................7 5.1 To USAID on FTF - INVC project.....................................................................................................7 5.2 To People Conducting the Survey (Under LUANAR) .......................................................................7 5.3 To LUANAR, Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics...................................................7 6.0 CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................................8
- 3. ii ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ACE Agriculture Commodity Exchange CSpro Census and Survey Processing System FTF Feed the Future FY Fiscal Years GoM Government of Malawi IMPS Integrated Microcomputer Processing System INVC Integrated Nutrition Value Chain ISSA Integrated System for Survey Analysis LUANAR Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resource USAID United States AID
- 4. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my sincere gratitude and joy to Dr. Mapemba for selecting me out of many students and allowing me to take part in the survey he directed. May the Almighty God continue to bless you.. My thanks should go to every member of the survey team I was part of. The supervisors, data entry clerks and enumerators: the experience with you has taught me a lot of things and I humbly appreciate. Almighty God bless and continue being with you all.
- 5. 1 1.0 INTRODUCTION In partial fulfillment of a degree at Bunda College, every third year student is required to go for an industrial attachment at the end of second semester. For agricultural Economics students, the minimum period for attachment is four weeks but the attaché can remain at the institution up to the end of the holiday if the conditions sustains the stay. The aim of an industrial attachment is to provide opportunities for students to put into practice what is taught in class in real working situations hence gaining hands on experience. 1.1 Summary of the report The report will include background of the survey I undertook, main activities I was involved in, lessons and challenges on the activities, experience gained, conclusion and recommendations. 2.0 BACKGROUND I worked for USAID on a project called: Feed the Future – Integrating Nutrition in Value Chains. I was involved in the survey mainly as an enumerator and partly as data entry personnel. The survey was conducted in seven districts as indicated above. This survey measured a number of indicators like gross margin per hector, number of farmers who have applied improved technology or management practice as a result of INVC assistance, number of hectors of land under improved technologies or management practices as a result of INVC assistance, yields of soybean and groundnuts, and value of incremental sales attributed to Feed the Future implementation. 2.1 Program Overview As a result of FTF assistance, approximately 21,000 farmers have gained access to certified groundnut and soybean seed through a revolving fund that will be scaled up to more than 100,000 farmers in the current year. USAID support to the Agriculture Commodity Exchange of Africa has facilitated $3 million in financing for farmers and traders using the ACE platform. In 2013, over 50,000 smallholder farmers received electronic vouchers to access seeds through the pilot activity of the GoM’s Farm Subsidy Input Program.
- 6. 2 2.2 Programme Impact In FY 2013, USAID supported nutrition interventions for over 147,272 children under five years old. Farmers planted 18,714 hectares of land using improved seed and practiced better soil management. 53,438 farmers received short-term training in agriculture and food security. USAID also facilitated $3,399,482 in rural agriculture loans focused on the marketing of crops through the Agriculture Commodity Exchange. Finally, INVC strengthened the capacity of Malawian implementing partners in financial management, monitoring and evaluation and technical value chain implementation. This shows the current status of the project underway. More farmers are therefore expected to benefit even more in the coming faze (2015-2016) of the project as planned by USAID. It is also important to note that this project is not happening only in Malawi but other countries as well. 3.0 ACTIVITIES, LESSONS AND CHALLENGES FACED 3.1 Questionnaire A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of question and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. In the survey I used a questionnaire which was already designed and available the time I started the survey. Even though this is the case proper understanding of the questionnaire was required from every member who was involved in this survey including myself. There was therefore thorough review of the questionnaire by every member together as a group and individually. After this there was role play among ourselves in pairs on the whole questionnaire. To make sure that the questionnaire was well developed and has been well understood by the enumerators pre-testing was involved. This was done in villages of Ngwangwa Extension Planning Area in Lilongwe district. The questionnaire was reviewed again and final copy was made for the whole survey. There are a number of things I have learnt to put into consideration when designing a questionnaire: i. Questions should not be biased and should not lead the respondent to a particular answer. ii. It is important to use statement and words which can be easily interpreted in the same way by different sub population of the population of interest.
- 7. 3 iii. Not to make assumption about the respondent specifically on the kind of response he/she is going to give. iv. Use of correct spelling, grammar, punctuation and skip codes in the questionnaire as any mistake on these will lead to misunderstanding of the questions and skipping some important questions by the enumerator resulting in poor collection of data. v. Making sure that the questionnaire is reviewed and checked properly before the actual collection of data is started. On the other hand, there are a number of challenges I faced individually and as a group of enumerators through using of the questionnaire provided in data collection. Some of them are communication barriers like language used by the respondent and myself in some areas of the study area. There was poor understanding of some words/language (Chichewa) used on the questionnaire and not being able to understand the local and only language spoken by the respondent being interviewed. Lastly, there were some errors in data collection resulting from errors on the questionnaire provided. The final printed questionnaire did not contain some changes and additions which were made and agreed upon by the group after pre testing. It was like a slightly different questionnaire from the one expected was being used in data collection. This created some confusion among enumerator especially at the beginning of the survey. As time went enumerators understood the questionnaire being used and became conversant with it hence reduction in number of errors being made. 3.2 Sampling This is process used in statistical analysis in which a predetermined number of observations will be taken from a larger population. The methodology used to sample from a larger population will depend on the type of analysis being performed. In the survey, simple random sampling was used to sample Extension Planning Areas, Tradition Authorities, villages and finally beneficiaries from different clubs. Microsoft excel was the package used in the process of sampling. USAID has the whole list of beneficiaries of the project from which the data was collected. The list was provided to the organisers of the project (under LUANAR) and it is from this list where sampling was done. As a student under attachment I was involved in the process of sampling hence I was able to properly learn how to do it, the formula to use in excel and how to identify the individuals from the list. I also noted that sampling can actually be more accurate than studying an entire population,
- 8. 4 because it affords researchers a lot more control over the subjects and it is less expensive comparing to studying the whole population. In addition to this, statistical manipulations are much easier with smaller data sets, and it is easier to avoid human error when inputting and analyzing the data. Though above is the case with sampling, there were a number of challenges faced as a group in the sampling process and identification of the sampled individuals during the survey. Some of the challenges faced are: i. Unavailability of the sampled beneficiaries ii. Logistics problems to meet the elements sampled when these elements are scattered and roads to various elements are not in good conditions to travel on. iii. Sometimes the database used in sampling had distorted information which made locating some elements very difficult. iv. Social desirability: Most people like to present themselves in a favorable light, so they will be reluctant to admit to unsavory attitudes or some malpractice in the production and marketing of the crops under study. Instead, their responses were sometimes biased toward what they believe is socially desirable. 3.3 Data Collection Data was collected from different districts after proper sampling in those districts. Enumerators went in different teams to meet sampled farmers to interview them. Each enumerator interviewed about four to six farmers every day. Each farmer was interviewed individually by only one enumerator and different questions were asked to the farmer by the enumerator and responses were recorded on the questionnaire. An enumerator was required to spend about 1-1.5 hours with each and every farmer when doing the interview. After the interview and before leaving the farmer an enumerator was required to cross check his/her questionnaire in making sure that he/she has asked all the necessary questions and has collected the required data/information. By following the above procedure I learnt how to maximize the chances of collecting quality data and reducing errors as much as possible. I also learnt how to develop a rapport between me and the farmer to ensure that the farmer freely gives the required information with highest accuracy.
- 9. 5 Under data collection there are a number of challenges I faced in the field. Some of the challenges are: i. Barriers in communication due me or the farmer not being able to understand the language used by either. This mainly happened in the districts of Balaka, Machinga and Mangochi where Yao is the primary language used by the local people. ii. Unavailability of sampled respondents which made data collection even harder considering that sometimes even the replacements given were not being found. iii. Logistics problems when the elements are scattered. This was even worse when route to the element’s location is not in good condition to travel on and there was no enough day time to travel to such locations. 3.4 Data Entry Data entry is another important aspect involved in the survey in making sure that accurate final results are realised. Data entry clerk should make sure that he/she enters the data as on the questionnaire as long as it is true, accurate and logically making sense. As a student on attachment I was privileged to do sampling, enumeration and data entry from which I learnt a lot of things helpful in my studies as an agricultural economist student. 3.4.1 Census and Survey Processing System 5.0 CSpro 5.0 was the software used in data entry in the survey. CSpro is a software package for entering, editing, tabulating, and disseminating data from censuses and surveys. CSPro combines the features of the IMPS and the ISSA which makes it even better. CSPro uses data dictionaries to provide a common description of each data file used. I found the programme easy to use because it was designed to be as user-friendly as possible, yet powerful enough to handle the most complex applications. I also noted that it can be used by a wide range of people, from non-technical staff assistants to senior demographers and programmers. CSpro was also very good in such a way that it used a file structure that handles well the complexities that arise from dealing with many different statistical units, while minimizing storage requirements, and interfacing well with statistical software at the analytic phase.
- 10. 6 The only problem I faced in data entry was disturbances and confusion when the questionnaire being entered had some serious errors. This was the case because CSpro easily identifies errors if the questionnaire’s data has some serious errors and it does not allow one to proceed with data entering if such is the case. These were resolved by approaching the enumerator of that particular questionnaire and necessary corrections being made. These correction were then handled under data management. 3.5 Data Management Data management is the process whereby data is well prepared (managed) for analysis by making necessary corrections wherever necessary. Survey data management begins concurrently with questionnaire design and may to a large extent influence the latter. The data manager should be consulted on each major draft of the questionnaire, since he or she will have an especially sharp eye for flaws in the definition of units of observation, skip patterns and other important considerations. Since I was involved in data entry as explained above, I was able to learn a number of things on data management. Good data management ensures that data which will be available for analysis is complete, correct and verifiable. The data should be subjected to five kinds of checks: range checks, checks against reference data, skip checks, consistency checks and typographic checks. This reduces the chances of errors during the analysis. Finally data management makes sure that confidentiality of the data is secure. It is particularly important that the information which connects the survey data to the personal identification of the subject, will be available only to persons who have authorized access to such data. 4.0 EXPERIENCE Through direct interactions with farmers I have learnt what really happens on the ground with farmers during production of different crops specifically groundnuts and soybean. Their activities, practices, beliefs to do with the crops, needs, challenges and successes were clearly explained by the farmers from which I have learnt a lot of things helpful as an agricultural student. I have been able to know real problems that farmers are facing in their respective farming business and how such problems affect their productivity as well as returns from their agricultural enterprises.
- 11. 7 Academically I have learnt a number of activities that are involved in a survey as indicated above, challenges likely to be faced in a survey, how to write case studies and reports, relating with co- workers and how to do assigned field work. I have also learnt how to use excel, CSpro and STATA in entering and analysis of survey data. 5.0 RECOMMENDATION 5.1 To USAID on FTF - INVC project I recommend extensive training to some farmers from different areas on the production, management and marketing of the products under the project. Farmers who are normally very far from the people who provide different extension services in the project do receive seeds but are not taught proper ways of doing different operations from land preparation to marketing hence poor benefits from the programme specifically to the local farmers. 5.2 To People Conducting the Survey (Under LUANAR) I recommend considerations and tackling of the challenges faced as identified above. This is likely to help in improving the accuracy of the results obtained from a survey and avoiding errors which occur during the survey more especially in data collection. 5.3 To LUANAR, Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics I recommend that the programme of sending third year students to do some attachments should continue but it is very important to start preparing for these attachment in time. This is to both students and lecturers. With the increasing numbers of students being enrolled in the department, it is very important to put up a strategic plan that will make sure that each and every student is attached in a reliable organisation to meet the goals of sending student for attachments. The attachment supervisors should also make sure that they visit their students in order to asses them during the attachment period as required. There should also be proper communication and confirmation with the organisations where the students are being sent. This should be the case because some organisations deny the students in saying that they have not been told anything by the department (university) on attachment students over the required period.
- 12. 8 6.0 CONCLUSION The attaché is glad to have learnt a lot of things from the survey as it provided a rare opportunity for turning theoretical information into practical. The attachment provided an opportunity to acquire interpersonal skills and ability for team work through interaction with professionals and farmers involved in agricultural production, agri-business and related activities. In general the attachment has been a success to my life both as an individual and a student of LUANAR.