They also tend to be severely credit constrained, with few means to mitigate these risks, so they suffer from a limited capacity to invest in improved farm technology systems that might increase their productivity. Social implications: African farmers are mainly smallholders, so they face inherent production risks. Practical implications: Aligning government and public support programs with private initiatives suggests opportunities for greater benefits.

The implication of this research is that policy initiatives which support a credit-linked insurance system should not only encourage upscaling but also resilience of the scheme. credit, insurance and input supply), but the overall impact is substantial. The current analysis cannot specifically attribute the impact of individual components of the bundle (i.e. A credit-linked insurance scheme provides such risk-exposed smallholders, who lack or have only limited collateral, with commercial agricultural credit services and greater access to input. Research limitations/implications: Risk-exposed smallholders tend to be severely credit constrained, so they cannot invest in sufficient inputs to increase their yields. Findings: A comparison of households that used the program and those that dropped out reveals that smallholders who lost the credit-linked insurance bundle purchased less fertilizer (−36%), and this input restriction resulted in diminished harvests (−27%) and less quantity sold (−31%). Of these, 113 households left for an exogenous, involuntary reason (i.e. A cross-sectional survey, conducted among 409 households that enrolled in a credit-linked insurance program prior to a drought and adverse market conditions, revealed that 252 households dropped out of the program. Design/methodology/approach: To estimate the impact of a credit-linked insurance bundle, this research relies on a natural field experiment. Purpose: This research seeks to assess the impact of a credit-linked insurance bundle in Zambia, in terms of the inputs used and the amount of maize subsequently produced and sold.

Aftermath 2021 review