Women smart: Improving ‘gendered’ tools for assessing the impacts of small-scale livestock and fish value chains

Jo Cadilhon at gender workshop

ILRI agricultural economist Jo Cadilhon (seated right), from France, holds an Indian-style world café to elicit ideas from gender experts for an assessment he is conducting of a women’s dairy cooperative in India (photo credit: ILRI).

I mentioned in a previous blog post how important I believed it was to get myself trained in issues intersecting gender and agricultural development so that I could make use of robust ‘gendered’ research tools and incorporate gender in more meaningful ways in my research proposals. That is why I joined the Livestock and Fish gender working group in a workshop and planning meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 14–17 Oct 2013. This workshop was co-sponsored by the Policies, Institutions and Markets CGIAR research program, which is tasked, among other things, to develop tools and methods for assessing the gender impacts of agricultural development activities.

I gathered three main lessons from this workshop, which I think we should bear in mind when working on livestock development.

Working definition of gender
ILRI scientists Kathleen Colverson and Alessandra Galiè and other gender experts could share many official (scientifically validated) definitions of gender, but what follows is, I think, a good working definition that emerged from a discussion with the workshop participants on ‘What is gender?’

Gender is a fact of human societies, all of which historically have evolved different roles and responsibilities for men and women, with power shared differently by the different sexes and social groups.

The characteristics and perceptions that differentiate men and women (and do so differently in different cultures) are not fixed but rather vary across cultures and locations and time. This fact suggests that development projects can help women as well as other marginalized social groups (the youth, the elderly, ethnic minorities, etc.) empower themselves in social interactions through what is known in research circles as gender transformative approaches.

One implication of this working definition for CGIAR centres and research programs is that it is not only with whom we are working (e.g., women’s groups or NGOs focusing on women) that matters in development but also how we as researchers and research organizations work and view gender.

Elements to a ‘gendered’ dairy value chain assessment
I took the opportunity of the workshop to ask for help from all the gender experts present. I invited small groups to join me at a world café table where I presented the value chain assessment I was coordinating of a Mulukanoor Dairy Women’s Cooperative in India. Dressed for the part in a kurta and longyi, I set the café table as a space on the floor with a few cushions to encourage more context-relevant and informal discussions. I asked my colleagues: What should a ‘gendered’ value chain assessment report focusing on this women’s cooperative contain?

The most surprising response I got was to consider recommending to the women-only cooperative that it open its membership to men. Our approach to gender is not just about promoting women, the gender experts explained. It’s about enabling all marginalized groups in a society equitable access to assets and decision-making processes.

Improving tools for ‘gendered’ value chain research
Partners of the ILRI-led CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish have already developed a toolkit of questionnaires for value chain analysis. An activity I especially enjoyed at the gender workshop was sitting down to make recommendations on how to further ‘engender’ these value chain research tools. As a regular user of the tools, I was keen to get new perspectives on how they could be improved from colleagues who had never before used the questionnaires and interview guides.

A basic principle of research is to keep one’s mind open to constructive criticism of one’s work. There was plenty of that in this workshop! I walked away with many new ideas and ways of working to consider. From my perspective, the workshop was a great success in fostering ‘women smart’ livestock research for development.

The author, Jo Cadilhon, is a senior agricultural economist in ILRI’s Policy, Trade and Value Chains Program.

Read Cadilhon’s previous blog post on a similar subject: Impacts of value chain development on smallholder women dairy farmers in India, ILRI Clippings Blog, 11 Oct 2013.

Short filmed interviews of researchers and practitioners in livestock and fish ‘value chains’ in Uganda

Watch two short video interviews made on the sidelines of a recent three-day AgriFood Chain Toolkit Conference-Livestock and Fish Value Chains in East Africa, held 9–11 Sep 2013 in Kampala, Uganda.

Researchers and practitioners in livestock and fish value chains came together in this meeting, which ambitiously set itself the tasks not only of refining a research-developed value chain toolkit but also of supporting a community of practice established to review, assess and improve value chain approaches in research-for-development projects.

Fifty-seven participants from across Africa attended the conference, which was hosted by two multi-centre CGIAR research programs—‘Livestock and Fish’, led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, and ‘Policies, Institutions and Markets’, led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), based in Washington, DC.

In this first, 3-minute, film, the meeting’s CGIAR research hosts share their views on what they hope to get out of the meeting and why their research matters.

‘We’re looking at ways research can help speed development of both the livestock and the aquaculture sub-sectors,’ said Iheanacho Okike, who leads ‘value chain development’ research in the Livestock and Fish program. ‘The value chain approach is helping us assess these commodities right from the dealers of inputs to livestock and aquaculture farmers to the production, marketing and consumption of the farmers’ food products, whether milk, meat and eggs, or fish, crustaceans and molluscs.’

Derek Baker, an ILRI agricultural economist who works with the Policies, Institutions and Markets program, said feedback from this meeting will help his research team assess if and how markets can be make to work better for small-scale food producers.

‘We wanted to capture the personal experiences of value chain practitioners and stakeholders in their use of our value chain toolkit. And we wanted to better understand the opportunities these livestock entrepreneurs would like to take advantage of if they could find the means to do so,’ said Baker.

In this second, 4-minute, film, a few value chain agents/practitioners share their experiences in using the CGIAR toolkit for dairy, fish and crop farming in eastern Africa.

‘Using this toolkit has helped me to improve my livestock production and to find new, better, ways to run my business’, said Lovin Kobusingye, a fish processor from Uganda.

‘Understanding how these value chain tools are used is critical in helping us know if and how the value chain approach works in the smallholder context’, said Elijah Rusike, from the Swedish Cooperative Centre in Zimbabwe. ‘We want information that can help us establish benchmarks and enables us to trace all the different actors within particular food value chains’, said Rusike.

The Kampala conference is one of several planned review workshops that will collate, synthesize and share good practices of value chain tool users, practitioners and researchers. This information supports ongoing CGIAR agriculture ‘value chains’ research in eastern Africa.

Read a related story from the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish blog

Read a related story from ILRI’s Livestock Markets Digest blog

Read notes from the event

View pictures of the event

View posters featured at the conference

Read a report on the workshop storytelling process

Dairy farming = ‘dairy education’: The sector that is educating Kenya’s children – filmed story

This 3:25-minute film shares how keeping cows has enabled Margaret Muchina, a dairy farmer from central Kenya, to support and educate her four children, who include Edward Kimani, who sat for his high school exam in 2010 and emerged as one of the country’s best students.

This single mother from Kenya’s Kiambu District started keeping dairy cows on her 2-acre farm in 1985. Her regular dairy income, mostly through daily milk sales, has been critical in enabling her to support her family, including the schooling of her children. Her dairy income is now supporting Kimani’s education at the University of Nairobi, where he is studying for a bachelor’s degree in geology.

Between 1997 and 2005, Margaret was one of many Kenyan farmers who participated in an award-winning Smallholder Dairy Project that carried out research to help improve the country’s smallholder, and largely informal, dairy sector, which trades mostly in ‘raw ‘ (unpasteurized) milk and was then being more harassed than supported by regulatory authorities.

The Smallholder Dairy Project supported a move towards towards a more favourable policy environment that paved the way for significant increases in the number of raw milk traders in the country, which helped milk producers like Margaret sell more milk leading to wider economy wide benefits for small-scale farmers.

Like many other Kenyans keeping one or two dairy cows to help them feed their families and send their children to school, Margaret Muchina is grateful to the Smallholder Dairy Project for information on best farm management and milk handling practices. Mrs Muchina now operates her small dairying with greater freedom and with new support from her government.

The Smallholder Dairy Project was led by Kenya’s Ministry of Livestock and implemented by the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Find out more about the Smallholder Dairy Project

ILRI’s current work in dairying focuses on value chain development in Tanzania. Read more here.

Staff of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and many other CGIAR centres and research programs will be discussing the successes of Africa’s agriculture, including how its livestock sector can help achieve food security in the continent, at the 6th Africa Agriculture Science Week (AASW6) in Accra, Ghana. This event is being hosted by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and the Government of Ghana and runs from Monday–Saturday, 15–20 Jul 2013.

Check out this blog next week for more stories from the 6th Africa Agriculture Science Week.