This report summarizes the impacts of a 2014-2019 RCT spanning Mozambique and Tanzania in partnership with CIMMYT to test the impacts of bundling an innovative type of insurance with drought-tolerant maize to expand drought protection for small-scale farming families.
We paired drought-tolerant maize with index insurance designed to protect farmers when even drought-tolerant seeds fail. Only farmers using drought-tolerant seed bundled with index insurance bounced back quickly from severe shock seasons. After seeing the technologies work, they also increased their production to higher, pre-shock levels—a phenomenon we call Resilience+.
The study on a hypothetical area yield index insurance contract in Ecuador found that for most farmers in the sample, the area yield index insurance would have performed equally well or much better at the same dollar-for-dollar cost compared to the existing conventional insurance contract.
With new drought tolerant (DT) maize varieties ready to go to market, and with our growing knowledge of how to design effective insurance products for small-scale agriculture, now is an opportune moment to close this critical knowledge gap.
This brief examines the parallel but currently separate efforts by the public and private sectors and demonstrate how combining efforts could lead to important synergies and advantages for both sectors.
Unlike abstract questions about whether people might “like” to have insurance, the games put the actual product on the table with its market price attached.
