Synopsis/Abstract of Research Activity and Expected Results

IFPRI’s HarvestPlus program is interested in studying the impact of a nutritious and climate smart biofortified maize variety on adoption, productivity, nutritional intake of farming households in Malawi. The commercialization of this variety by a private sector company offers critical market feasibility and policy lessons for improving the food and income security of smallholder farmers. Evaluating the impact of the introduction of the new variety calls for a randomization design in which villages are clustered into those that receive the variety (i.e., the treatment arms) and those that will not receive it (i.e., control arms). Additionally, we are testing a savings product in two treatment arms that use savings groups to help farmers “save up” for seed bags in collaboration with a local commercial bank. The study will also offer critical lessons on subgroups such as women and women headed households. The basic study design is included as Annex A.

This Request for Applications is the first of a two stage process of inviting survey companies to work with IFPRI on a randomized control trial to be implemented between 2025 and 2027. The survey will include a listing survey, baseline survey, and at least two follow up post-harvest rounds, and a small qualitative study. Survey companies are expected to provide a brief letter of interest, capability statement and specific and high-level budgets based on expected deliverables. Note however that this first round does not in any way make IFPRI liable for contracting the applicant. Only shortlisted candidates selected from this round will be further invited to submit full proposals. The deadline for this round is December 5th, 2024 while the next round will be announced later.

Technical Approach and Methodology

As described earlier, this study aims to implement a cluster randomized control trial with a focus on five districts in Malawi, namely Mulanje, Salima, Balaka, Mchinji, and Kasungu.

The study has three treatment and one control arm. 75% of approximately 3500 farmers will have at least one treatment plot (the biofortified variety) whereas the control plots will grow regular varieties. The primary target group for the treatment arms are farmer who are members of savings groups. The clustering method among others ensures to minimize potential contamination effects due to “variety sharing” or extension spillovers as entire clusters will be randomly assigned to either treatment or control groups.
In other words, clustering is taking place at the village level following the natural village boundaries. We expect 10 households will be randomly selected from each treatment and control cluster (approximately 245 clusters). Moreover, additional 4 farming households will be sampled per cluster to track local spillovers and account for attrition. Following a listing survey (to cover all eligible farmers at the cluster level) some farmers will be selected through a lottery to qualify for participation in the study. Different treatment arms come with different encouragements e.g discounts to study effects on uptake. Farmers will self-select into the lottery during the listing survey. A partner seed company will receive the list of winners and deliver the seed to treatment areas working in collaboration with their own distribution hubs and lead agrodealers.

In sum, four survey rounds including a baseline and two post-harvest rounds (tentative) and an initial listing survey will be carried out over the course of two agriculture seasons (visiting the same households). The listing survey will be collection of very basic household information and also collecting data on the local ecosystem for the treatment including savings groups, agrodealers and bank branches. The baseline questionnaire will collect detailed demographic, consumption, and agriculture information from households. The same household questionnaire will be used for both post-harvest rounds. The post-harvest questionnaires will add questions on the specific technology bundle experience. A qualitative survey at the beginning of the study of around 250 households (after listing) will elicit potential adoption of the variety at specified prices and also check the sentiment towards typical local varieties, their traits and approaches to saving and investment for farm inputs.

Scope of Activities

To reach the goals of the project, the following tasks will be addressed:

Task 1 – Preparatory

• Work with lead researchers and the local IFPRI team to understand the research design, key data requiremnets and questionnaires. Program the surveys in Survey CTO and obtain all local permissions to conduct the survey.

Task 2 – Team Training

• Finalize/hire survey team, field test the listing and baseline CTO instrument and finalize it, deliver training workshop for enumerators to prepare for the listing, baseline, and qualitative survey.

Task 3 – Listing, Qualitative Survey and Baseline

• Conduct listing, recruitment of study and survey participants, and qualitative survey
• Conduct baseline survey
• Conduct high frequency data checks and back checks as needed
• Deliver baseline survey report and the data set

Task 4 – Post harvest round 1

• Complete preparatory activities and surveys for post harvest survey rounds 2 and 3
• Conduct high frequency data checks and back checks as needed
• Deliver PH1 report and data set

Task 5 – Post harvest round 2

• Complete preparatory activities and surveys for post harvest survey rounds 2 and 3
• Conduct high frequency data checks and back checks as needed
• Deliver PH2 report and data set

Task 6 – Other – Marketing and Monitoring

• Sharing agrodealers information, varietal flyers and SMS of discount vouchers to farmers with the local HarvestPlus IFPRI team
• Tracking agrodealers sales before planting season
• Mystery shopping in areas where discounts are available to ensure only targeted farmers can access them
• Any other monitoring as advised

Deliverables

Deliverable 1

• Local government and IRB approvals
• Survey training plan based on agreed methodology
• Survey logistics plan

Deliverable 2

• Identify/recruit adequate supervisors, enumerators, back checkers, research assistants and transcribers comfortable with the local language and culture in Malawi. Ensure representation of women
• Translated survey instruments
• Draft survey CTO instruments
• Final survey CTO instruments
• Survey quality control plan and data verification and cleaning protocol
• Conduct a joint field test with a small set of enumerators, finalize the survey
• Conduct a training workshop for enumerators and data management staff
• Complete listing for five local goernment areas
• Deliver listing data and report

Deliverable 3

• Provide all in field coordination for lottery and ensuring recruitment of both treatment and control group participants
• Finalize qualitative questionnaire with IFPRI and program in survey CTO
• Deliver qualitative survey report
• Conduct baseline survey with strong compliance with data checks and adherence to sampling frame
• Record each treatment and control plots GPS location
• Ensure data quality and participant privacy
• Raw and clean dataset and data quality report submitted

Deliverable 4

• Submit field testing reports and conduct virtual training on post-harvest questionnaires before the harvest season starts
• Conduct post-harvest surveys ensuring compliance with data quality requirements and ensuring participant privacy
• Submit raw and clean dataset and data quality reports separately for post-harvest round 1
• Conduct debriefing

Deliverable 5

• Submit field testing reports and conduct virtual training on post-harvest questionnaires before the harvest season starts
• Conduct post-harvest surveys ensuring compliance with data quality requirements and ensuring participant privacy
• Submit raw and clean dataset and data quality reports separately for post-harvest round 2
• Conduct debriefing

Deliverable 6

• Conduct monitoring activities during implementation stage for two seasons in coordination with local HarvestPlus IFPRI team, share data collected with research team in real time for periodical checks and quality control and other implementation partners

Application Requirements

Letter of interest (1 page max.) with approach to the study

Capability statement (2 pages max.) to support:

• Whether this is an established local company with local staffing
• Whether the company is used to working on large rigorous sample surveys
• Does it have a track record with large international organizations such as IFPRI, World Bank, UN, international universities, etc.?
• Does it have a gender balanced enumeration team?
• Is the enumeration team adept at local languages?
• Is the company used to working with local stakeholders and able to obtain local ministerial and research ethic approvals as required?
• Does it have experience working with large household surveys, preferably experience with RCT designs, excellence in Survey CTO, stata, GPS, and proven record in survey monitoring and quality control?

CVs of senior staff

Budget in template given below (USD); add rows/columns if needed