Voucher Schemes for Enhanced Fertilizer Use: Lessons Learned and Policy Implications

Behaviour change times are based on the evidence from the SPLIFA project in Malawi. Farmers who went through two cycles of the program demonstrated greater benefits in the second cycle than they had in the first cycle. It would be reasonable to assume that they had learned lessons from the first year and were able to improve their maize yields in the second. Farmers who joined the project in the second year did not exhibit any benefit from the experience of those farmers who had been through the program in the previous year. However there is not any empirical evidence for this. One might suppose that if a second generation of farmers included "early adopters" there could well be a faster behaviour change. All programs that been run have not had follow up monitoring and evaluation to provide the empirical evidence one way or the other.

There are a range of strategies being tested for strengthening input markets including: business training - esp for wholesalers and retailers; inventory credit; partial credit guarantees; complementary input demonstration programs and extension efforts; small enterprise development grants; development of trade associations. Input voucher programmes can have positive and negative impacts on input market development that planners need to be aware of, and monitor. The tendency in many programmes is to reduce competition in order to assure that inputs are efficiently exchanged for vouchers. Individual suppliers are contracted or registered and given monopoly priviledges to supply particular communities. The difficult trick is to assure efficient input supply to the village, while encouraging competition to redeem the vouchers.

Farmers commonly ask for inputs when they have cash to pay for them. This cash is more likely to be available after the harvest and during the main marketing season. It is less likely to be available, in most rainfed systems, at the time of planting. Therefore, it is logical to test subsidies involving a co-payment by the recipient just after crop sales. But when do these sales occur. many households sell just after harvest in order to avoid storage losses (and gain immediate cash). In some cases, the market demands the crop (e.g. a cash crop like cotton or paprika) immediately after harvest. But other farmers prefer to take advantage of rising prices later in the year - an effort being reinfiorced by the promotion of various types of warehousing systems. So the best timing will depend on farming system characteristics. Another option tested in Malawi is commitment savings - whereby a farmer sets aside cash in a 'locked' savings account just after harvest, and regains access to this during the planting period.

Concerns about possible political favoratism in some countries have encouraged the organization of programmes outside of government channels - e.g. through NGOs. If NGOs are also curtailed, the scope for such assistance may be limited.

None of what you heard is a hypothetical situation. All the exanples were real, and potential models. The point is the lessons derived from these schemes are growing and we should be methodically reviewing these lessons in an effort to identify improvements in the underlying strategies. I think improvements are being made in all the active programmes - some faster than others. And there are generally positive payoffs; the objective is to increase these further.