BRAZILIAN STARTUP DOES PIONEERING DROUGHT RESEARCH IN THE STATE OF CEARÁ MGov Brasil documented the impacts of droughts using a mobile system and discovered that these also affect farmers’ decision-making ability MGov Brasil has done pioneering research with small farmers in the state of Ceará in partnership with researchers from Harvard (Cambridge, USA) and Warwick (England) universities, and the Meteorology and Water Resource Center of Ceará (Fundação Cearense de Meteorologia e Photo by: Myrela Bauman Myrela by: Photo Recursos Hídricos, FUNCEME). The study’s goal was to evaluate the impacts of droughts farmers’ living conditions, using an innovative methodology that gathered information using cell-phones. The study was done on the eve of the São José holiday, a date considered a thermometer of beliefs about rainfall in the region. In March and June 2014, over Bauman Myrela by: Photo two weeks on each month, the project conducted nearly 4,000 interviews with over 700 family farmers residing in 54 of the driest municipalities in the state – such as Irauçuba, the second driest municipality in Ceará and the most desert-like – to draw an accurate portrait of the reality faced by farmers affected by the drought. In addition to gaining an understanding of basic aspects, like the impacts of droughts on income and consumption, the researchers also developed a methodology to testing cognitive function, attention, and memory. “For first time, not just in Brazil, but worldwide, the way in which concerns about drought affect decision-making capacity was evaluated using cell- phones,” says Guilherme Lichand, a partner at MGov Brasil. Although previous studies have conducted similar testing through enumerators, the possibility of evaluating cognitive impacts using cell-phones “is significantly innovative, enabling the replication of this type of study in even more challenging contexts,” Lichand added. The cell-phone-based data collection methodology was selected because it is a low- cost way of reaching the study’s target audience, which is scattered across the State and, in many cases, located in remote, hard-to-access regions. “Cell-phone-based data collection has been successfully used by organizations such as the World Bank and UNICEF in Latin America and Africa,” states Marcos Lopes, a partner at MGov Brasil. “What we have implemented is even more innovative, because we do not need to distribute smartphones or cell-phones with specific software: we just use simple technology – voice and texting – to have the greatest possible reach. In addition, the respondent does not pay for any message sent or call received, and is compensated for participating. Considering the fact that over 87% of Brazilian households have a cell- phone – nearly 80% of them prepaid – the methodology’s potential reach is extremely far-ranging.” Figure 2: Cell-phone penetration in Brazilian homes, by state Distrito Federal São Paulo Rio de Janeiro Santa Catarina Rio Grande do Sul Paraná Espírito Santo Goiás Mato Grosso do Sul Mato Grosso Minas Gerais Rondônia Roraima Amapá TocanMns Rio Grande do Norte Acre Amazonas Sergipe Pernambuco Bahia Paraíba Ceará Pará Alagoas Piauí Maranhão Source: MGov Brasil Source: 0,0% 10,0% 20,0% 30,0% 40,0% 50,0% 60,0% 70,0% 80,0% 90,0% 100,0% Notes: (1) percentage of permanent private households that have landline and cellular telephones or just cell phones, according to data from the Demographic Census of IBGE; (2) States ordered by household per capita income from 2010 (IBGE). The study – divided into six rounds of questions – documented important points that may assist with the development of public policies that are better suited to farmers’ actual needs. In cases in which polices already developed by the government are adequate, the results can justify the expansion of the number of people served. According to Eduardo Sávio Martins, President of FUNCEME, “The study will provide significant information about how the public sector ought to design its governmental policies. In the case of FUNCEME, it will enable an assessment of its communication strategy with a wide array of final users of the climate information.” The partnership with FUNCEME and with Ceará’s Institute of Rural Extension and Technical Assistance (Empresa de Assistência Técnica e Extensão Rural do Estado do Ceará, EMATERCE) was essential for project’s implementation. Taking advantage of FUNCEME’s coordination capacity and EMATERCE’s large reach, MGov Brasil developed a simple, objective, enrollment campaign that reached the target audience in an effective way. EMATERCE’s extension workers – state employees who interact on a daily basis with the farmers – publicized the study’s objectives; explained its potential benefits for developing policies for living in a semiarid climate that are better suited to the farmers’ needs; and got farmers to sign up. Figure 2: Farmer receives the sign-up leaflet (shown below) Photo by: Myrela Bauman Myrela by: Photo The six interactions with participants included questions about their socio-demographic profile, income, consumption and production, along with cognitive tests. The development of the cognitive questionnaire involved a rigorous process of testing, based on a pilot done with a subset of participants that selected the questions better able to nail down the impacts of water scarcity on farmers’ memory, attention span, and impulse-control. Those who responded to the six waves got R$ 9 in airtime credit. “Using a prize tied to the cell-phone is an important incentive for participation across the various survey waves. The retention rate over two weeks of collection was 97.5%, an extremely high index compared to any standard,” says Rafael Vívolo, a partner at MGov. Another important part of the study, which also took advantage of the possibility of giving airtime credit incentives, was a mechanism for farmers to reveal their rainfall forecasts for their municipality. At the beginning of the study, participants had to classify their rainfall expectations into one of three categories – normal, above normal, or below normal, with respect to the historic average for their municipality – and could update their estimate at the start of the following week. If their stated forecast corresponded to cumulative precipitation at the end of May, the farmer would get R$ 9 extra in airtime credit. This mechanism documented that over half the farmers disagreed with FUNCEME’s climate-forecasting models, which historically have been much more accurate than the forecast broadcasted by the media, to which the farmers generally have access. The main results of the survey are highlighted below: • The State program for subsidized seed distribution turned out to be more effective in municipalities with rainfall forecasts below the historical average: in these cases, 69% of farmers received seeds at no cost, versus 52% in municipalities where the forecast was around normal; • Lack of accurate information about rainfall forecasts leads to losses in all cases. In municipalities with normal forecasts, pessimistic farmers buy less fertilizer wasting lucrative opportunities. Among those with a below-normal forecast, optimistic farmers buy more fertilizer, increasing their vulnerability to droughts; • Despite the government’s efforts to enroll farmers in the drought-insurance program, the sign-up rate is still low: 46% of family farmers without access to irrigation in the state of Ceará did not pay the sign-up fee for the program in 2014. The mechanisms for promoting and securing participation in the program need to be reviewed, since its cost is low: signing up costs just R$ 12.75 while the premium corresponds to five installments of R$ 170. Many of these farmers live in municipalities with an official rainfall forecast below normal, in a situation of heightened vulnerability; • Sending text messages – a simple policy with nearly no cost – has a significant impact on poorly informed farmers. After they received the FUNCEME forecast, 57% of optimistic farmers updated their expectations, potentially adjusting their productive decisions over time. • Farmers who received text messages with below-normal rainfall forecasts perform more poorly on attention-span, memory and cognitive function tests. This result illustrates that droughts may have much broader impacts than their known direct effects on income. With the data in hand, researchers produced a rigorous analytical report with policy recommendations, shared with the State authorities in Ceará. In addition, given the relevance of the results and their potential impact for designing polices better-suited to the semiarid region, MGov Brasil and the State Government of Ceará studied the possibility of monitoring the interviewed farmers over 12 months, with the goal of documenting their living conditions throughout the dry season. “High-frequency data collection, and following farmers over time, can inform policy design to better serve a group of people who are extremely vulnerable to climate shocks, about which little or nothing is known. More broadly, knowledge of the daily grind of urban or rural poverty is very limited, not just in Brazil, but around the world. We hope to contribute toward shrinking this gap,” says Marcos Lopes. MGOV BRASIL Founded in 2012 by partners Guilherme Lichand, Marcos Lopes, and Rafael Vívolo, MGov Brazil is a consulting firm specializing in public management and social impact, using mobile solutions for impact evaluation, monitoring and mobilization. CONTACT INFORMATION (+55