To what extent does tenure security shape agroforestry investment and impacts on agriculture and livelihoods in strong customary land systems? Evidence from early agroforestry adopters in Zambia’s Eastern province Lauren Persha 1,2 and Heather Huntington 2 1 Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2 Cloudburst Consulting Group

LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCE GOVERNANCE RESEARCH AT USAID USAID’s research agenda helps fill tenure and resource governance evidence gaps, especially in context of customary land rights How well do new innovations or approaches work? Which interventions can/should be scaled up? How are benefits achieved? How do programs differently affect different types of beneficiaries? Build evidence base on inter-related agriculture, climate change, economic policy, governance, women’s empowerment and land conflict issues USAID supporting 8 impact evaluations of land/forest tenure programs in Africa Ethiopia: Pastoral and farmland rights certification programs (3 IEs) Guinea: Community land and artisanal diamond rights certification Liberia: Community land rights protection program (Namati/SDI) Tanzania: Farmland rights certification program Zambia: Agroforestry and land certification pilot, REDD+ pilot (2 IEs) Innovative approaches and standards for land sector research and impact evaluation work Mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative)  Context, whether/why Standardized data collection instruments  Generalizable findings Geospatial integration (site selection, contextual understanding)

RESEARCH MOTIVATION I: Agroforestry benefits and barriers to uptake Resurgence in promoting agroforestry to meet food security challenges and climate change mitigation/adaptation objectives for poor rural farmers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) Many small-scale studies show a range of benefits to smallholders: Improved soil fertility & crop yields Risk smoothing via crop diversification; increased or more reliable income Increased availability of wood products for HH use (e.g., fuelwood, fodder) But, agroforestry systems are complex, little work to rigorously quantify impacts at scale Yet, uptake in SSA is persistently low Cash, resource and inputs constraints Insufficient technical knowledge Incompatible land management practices within villages Broader cultural, demographic, institutional factors Insecurity over rights to land

RESEARCH MOTIVATION II: Does stronger tenure security incentivize agroforestry investments? To what extent does land tenure insecurity serve as a barrier to agroforestry uptake, and wider implementation of other climate-smart agricultural practices? Widely hypothesized, but few studies show a definitive link Difficult to rigorously test at scale Challenges of piloting tenure interventions; introducing experiments; overcoming selection biases Widely varying results across empirical work (Place 2009; Arnot et al 2011; Lawry et al 2014) Different incentives and relationships in strong customary or communal land systems? Endogeneity in tenure security-land investment relationship, other methods challenges: Definitions & measures of tenure security Approaches to strengthening household tenure security over land they use Small-N studies and HH rather than field level data Little understanding of variation across different socio-cultural, policy or tenure contexts

USAID’S TENURE AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE (TGCC) PILOT PROJECT IN ZAMBIA A package of tenure and agroforestry interventions aimed at increasing adoption of Climate- Smart Agriculture (CSA) in a customary land setting in Chipata District, Eastern Province TGCC’s tenure activities: Establishing Village Land Committees Participatory mapping to aid land allocation Support dissemination of land management rules agreed at chief level Capacity building on land administration processes, including: Land dispute resolution Administering customary land certificates Facilitate customary land certificates (at chief’s consent) Paralegal extension on land rights, certification and dispute resolution TGCC’s agroforestry activities: Extension support for establishment of 3 agroforestry species: Faidherbia albida (Msangu); Gliricidia sepium; Cajanus cajan (Pigeon pea) Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) IE across 294 villages to determine impacts and relative contributions of strengthening: (1) customary land governance; and (2) agroforestry extension support

TGCC IMPACT EVALUATION PURPOSE How do changes in property rights aimed to strengthen smallholder’s tenure security in a customary land system affect farmer decisions to practice climate-smart agriculture, including agroforestry?

RCT DESIGN: Measuring land tenure strengthening and agroforestry extension impacts on smallholder adoption of climate-smart agriculture Quantitative and qualitative survey instruments: HH and headperson surveys Key informant interviews on land and agroforestry Focus groups: women, youth, land-constrained HHs 15 HHs sampled per village, stratified by gender of HH head, wealth status and tribe Focus on measuring (among others): Household perceptions of tenure security Planned and applied agricultural land investments, including agroforestry and other CSA Longer term outcomes for: agricultural productivity, livelihoods, and climate resilience Eligible Chiefdoms TGCC Chiefdoms Control Villages Agroforestry Villages Land Tenure Villages Agroforestry + Land Tenure Villages Randomization Step

IE BASELINE DATA COLLECTION Baseline completed Aug 2014 Endline expected Aug 2017; panel survey Qualitative & Quantitative Data: 3,523 households across 294 villages Headperson survey Key informant interviews: agricultural extension officers; individuals involved in local land issues (e.g., Indunas, village elders) Focus groups: women, youth, land-constrained HHs Nested data collection across fields, HHs, villages

EARLY ADOPTERS’ AGROFORESTRY IMPACTS & TENURE SECURITY: Research Questions & Analysis Methods 1.What are characteristics of early agroforestry adopters amongst smallholders operating in Zambia’s customary land system context? 2.What are the impacts of agroforestry investments amongst this group of early adopters, on indicators of agricultural productivity and livelihoods? a.What shorter-term impacts from agroforestry adoption are discernable in this farm system context? (draws on qualitative and quantitative data) b.How does farmer perceived tenure security affect agroforestry investment outcomes? c.How do impacts vary by time since uptake? Entropy-weighted OLS as a matching approach to assess 3 outcomes: Agricultural productivity (field- level crop yield in Kg/Ha) Fertilizer use (Kg/Ha) Actual or expected value of main crop harvest sold (ZMK/Ha)

AGROFORESTRY CONTEXT Varied time since establishment, species planted & survival rates

AGROFORESTRY CONTEXT Early agroforestry adopters are not like average smallholders in the sample Agroforestry households significantly higher on key characteristics: Household size Farm labor availability Education level in the household Total land area used by household …And 50% lower incidence of experiencing land reallocation in the past (though very low overall) Agroforestry fields have significantly greater: Use of improved seed varieties, manuring and crop rotation Field size …And twice the rate (21%) of prior conflict as non-agroforestry fields

ENTROPY WEIGHTING TO MITIGATE CONFOUNDING FROM HH SELECTION INTO AGROFORESTRY Entropy weighting obtains balanced agroforestry (treatment) & non- agroforestry groups across relevant HH & field level confounders Weighted OLS yields less biased estimates of impacts

FINDINGS I: Agroforestry impacts on crop yields, fertilizer use, harvest value Simple comparison of means (no controls for HH selection into agroforestry), agroforestry fields have: Significantly higher average crop yields Significantly lower fertilizer use No field-level agroforestry effect on these outcomes in the entropy-weighted analyses Accounts for selection biases around agroforestry uptake & farming behavior Some indication of impacts for fields under agroforestry for 4+ years Shorter-term field-level impacts difficult to detect, especially given low N & variation in establishment and survival across fields

WHAT ARE SIGNIFICANT ASSOCIATIONS WITH YIELD, FERTILIZER USE AND HARVEST VALUE? (*) Only statistically significant for a restricted sample used a robustness check.

FINDINGS II: Farmer Qualitative Perceptions On Impacts Agroforestry farmers more likely to say they have soil fertility and yield benefits when agroforestry establishment is > 4 years (but low N to test) > 50% of agroforestry fields in sample were established within three years What benefits did agroforestry farmers say they’ve received so far? 52% ~ no benefits yet 32% ~ improved soil fertility 8% ~ higher crop yields or improved crop growth No significant variation by agroforestry species Why haven’t non-adopters taken up agroforestry? 40% ~ do not possess sufficient knowledge 40% ~ cannot obtain seedlings 4% ~ see no benefit from agroforestry

FINDINGS III: Tenure Context & Security Higher field-level tenure security (measured as expropriation risk) associated with: Lower yields (only in restricted robustness check sample) Lower fertilizer use & crop harvest value per hectare (entropy-weighted models) But, effect is small for both Actual land expropriation very uncommon at < 2% of households, but 11% of fields had experienced a prior land conflict Significantly higher proportion of these are agroforestry fields Stronger ability to establish directionality of tenure security – agroforestry investment relationship once panel data is in High levels of tenure security & confidence in village land governance overall But documentation of household customary use rights to land very uncommon (e.g. via customary certificates), and 81% of households would like to receive this Why? Main reason cited is to reduce likelihood of losing land in future 99% of households under customary tenure, 98% without documented use rights Few fields have formal land documentation, but agroforestry established on higher proportion of documented fields

KEY MESSAGES Who are agroforestry adopters, and what field level impacts are discernable over the short term? Agroforestry adopters’ household endowments, farming practices and land governance experiences likely differ from overall smallholder population Selection issues important to address for impact analyses, especially for non-RCTs Little evidence of impacts at field level across this group of early adopters at baseline, but qualitative support that longer-established fields may see stronger benefits High variation in agroforestry establishment & survival could mask stronger or earlier impacts on more successfully established fields Qualitative farmer perceptions provide useful complementary understanding of if and how agroforestry may impact agricultural inputs use, farm productivity and farmer land use decisions over shorter time frames post-establishment

CONCLUSIONS Implications for coupled land tenure and agroforestry extension programs Learning from “adopters at baseline” may provide useful programming guidance, such as extension efforts aiming to enlist households who are more likely to adopt agroforestry Wide variation in establishment success overall suggests role for post-establishment extension efforts 16% of fields had nearly 100% survival, but rate was < 10% for a similar proportion of fields Complimentary qualitative and land decision-based indicators of impacts are important, given system complexity and time needed for field-level benefits to accrue at scale Indications of importance of tenure and land documentation; warrants additional research Robust links difficult to establish in this small & varied group of early adopters

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