Inventory credit to enhance food security in Burkina Faso

Tristan Le Cotty, Elodie Maître D’hôtel and Julie Subervie
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Elodie Maître D’hôtel: Cirad-ES - Département Environnements et Sociétés - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, UMR MoISA - Montpellier Interdisciplinary center on Sustainable Agri-food systems (Social and nutritional sciences) - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - CIHEAM-IAMM - Centre International de Hautes Etudes Agronomiques Méditerranéennes - Institut Agronomique Méditerranéen de Montpellier - CIHEAM - Centre International de Hautes Études Agronomiques Méditerranéennes - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Elodie Maitre D'Hotel

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Abstract: In many African countries, rural households typically sell their crops immediately after the harvest, and then face severe food shortages during the lean season. This paper explores whether alleviating both credit and storage constraints through an inventory credit (or warrantage) program is associated with improvements in household livelihood. We partnered with a rural bank and a nation-wide organization of farmers to evaluate a warrantage program in seventeen villages in Burkina Faso. In randomly chosen treatment villages, households were offered a loan in exchange for storing a portion of their harvest as a physical collateral in one of the newly-built warehouses of the program. We found that the program has, on average, increased cultivated area in treated villages (mainly cotton and maize), fertilizer use, cattle and grain stock at the end of lean season (millet). Although much less robust, the results of the estimations concerning the direct users of the system further suggest that warrantage may have extended the self-subsistence period of about two weeks and increased dietary diversity, with more fruit consumed weekly.

Keywords: Inventory credit; Warrantage; Intertemporal price fluctuations; Storage; Savings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-01
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Published in World Development, 2023, 161, pp.106092. ⟨10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106092⟩

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Journal Article: Inventory credit to enhance food security in Burkina Faso (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03790571

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106092

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