The COVID-19 pandemic has had profound impacts on agricultural systems around the world, including food security and nutrition, food and livestock production, supply chains, and regional trade. Despite the challenges 2020 has presented, this year the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI) hosted one standard research competition and accepted off-cycle proposals aimed at generating rapid, useful, and responsible research that helps agricultural communities respond to the COVID-19 crisis. This year, ATAI funded six studies across five countries–ranging from exploratory proposal grants to full-scale evaluations. You can learn more about each study by clicking on the embedded links below.
Elizabeth Lyons and Philemon Chelanga tracked how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the health and economic conditions of pastoralists in Northern Kenya.
Kevin Donovan, Wyatt Brooks, and Bridges to Prosperity are conducting a randomized evaluation across 23 districts in Rwanda to determine the impact of building footbridges on wages and agricultural technology adoption and production.
In Uganda, Ameet Morjaria et al. are conducting a randomized evaluation to test whether providing traders “bonuses” for high-quality coffee affects the prices traders offer farmers for their coffee and whether this, in turn, affects farmers’ incentives to invest in the quality of their production.
Aprajit Mahajan et al. are partnering with the Government of Telangana in India for a randomized evaluation to determine the impact of restoring water tanks for irrigation on water management, agricultural output, and farmers’ income.
In this pilot study, Fiona Burlig et al. are testing an alternative solution to weather insurance to help farmers adapt to unpredictable weather patterns: long-range seasonal weather forecasts that predict the onset of the monsoon rains in India.
With this proposal development grant, Hope Michelson et al. are gathering information about price fluctuations in staple crops at planting and harvest in Zambia to investigate the feasibility of a future randomized evaluation on price insurance and grain storage.