DOI: 10.21223/p3/7trxlt
title: Dataset for: Nutritious Orange-Fleshed Sweetpotato (OFSP) For Niassa - Endline Household Survey

description: This report presents the summary of the findings from the baseline survey conducted in 2013, and results of the endline survey conducted in 2016 of the Irish Aid funded “Nutritious Sweetpotato for Niassa Project” implemented in Niassa province by CIP-Mozambique, in collaboration with Government, non-governmental partners, and community based organizations, among others. The overall objective of the project is to improve the intake of vitamin A and energy intake by at least 20,000 rural HH with women and young children in 8 districts of Niassa province from November 2012 to December 2016. The project uses OFSP-based approaches to ensure that at least 20% of households growing OFSP earn at least $53 per season from OFSP sales (measured in 2015/16 season), and increase average sweetpotato yields by 50%. Capacity building and testing novel approaches to maximize impacts from OFSP-based nutritional and agricultural programming are keys to achieving the overall objective. Summary From the results of the project, about 28, 044 households received OFSP clean planting material from almost 13 drought tolerant varieties in eight targeted districts, being 14,405 women and 13,639 men headed households. Almost 77% of the households had children less than 5 years (total of 28,203 children). About 18,784 households (17,009 women) were educated in nutrition. About 52% of the households in the target communities are now growing OFSP, and on average, those who sell the OFSP storage roots earn at least $50/year. Overall, the introduction of the new OFSP varieties resulted in average yield increases of sweetpotato by 67%. Production In relation of the area of production, maize (30%) was the most important crop in term of area covered, followed by cassava (14.2%), bean (13.2%), OFSP (7.8%), rice (6.2%) and other horticultures (6.1%). 34% of households in Lago cultivated cassava, the most important crop at the district. Tobacco crop in Mandimba and Mecanhelas remains at the second important crops with 12.8% and 16.4% of area respectively, and cotton in Cuamba at third place occupying 11.5% of production area. In terms of households, maize remains the most planted with 98.3% for the control, followed by bean (82%) and sweetpotato (54% for OFSP and other SP) before cassava (51%). However, OFSP became the first crop with 95.7% for the project beneficiary group followed by maize (86.4%), cassava (66.3%) and bean (59.3%). During the baseline, the majority of the respondents who grow sweetpotato sourced their planting material from their own plots (69%), while during the project implementation, almost 67% of the beneficiaries obtained the planting material from CIP/NGOs and associated and supervised partners. Additionally, during the project implementation, there was a significant involvement of the local agriculture authorities in the process of vine distribution. Approximately 9% of the farmers obtained their planting material via coordinated and field days organized by the local government agencies. Concerning the number of OFSP varieties planted by households, 49.5%, 31.2% and 12.8% of respondents had respectively 1, 2 and 3 varieties of OFSP and 0.4% of respondents used 8 varieties. For the control group, 74.4% of 39 households had one variety of OFSP where the maximum OFSP varieties used by household were 4. Out of 13 varieties tested in Niassa, Delvia, Gloria and Irene varieties were the most produced by households in the beneficiary group respectively by 21.8%, 21.8% and 10.5%. These varieties were planted respectively by 7%, 17.5% and 8.8% of control group households. Bela variety was planted by 7% of control group households. Lichinga, Chimbunila and Cuamba districts planted more Delvia variety while Muembe, Sanga, Mandimba and Lago districts planted more Gloria variety. About 5.1% of the agricultural area available to beneficiary households is used for sweetpotato. This represents approximately 119 hectares with sweetpotatoes. Among them, 28.5% was established with white fleshed and 51.8% orange-fleshed sweetpotato. The average area covered by OFSP per household for the control group was 413m2 against 993m2 for the beneficiary group. The production of OFSP roots per household ranged from 110kg in Cuamba and 425kg in Lichinga for the control group and 868kg in Mecanhelas and 3,310kg in Chimbunila for the beneficiary group. From the survey results, the average yield for the control group was 8.8t/ha while for the beneficiary group reached 10.5t/ha, representing an increase of 67% over the baseline of 6t/ha. Nutrition About 62.3% of the beneficiary group had access to diet information. The most important source of information about vitamin A for women was the health community volunteer with 54.8% followed by the health center with 24.6%. The household dietary diversity score (HDDS) was affected by agricultural conditions as well as by seasonal differences (including Ramadan) between baseline and endline measurements. As a result, and the high dietary diversity bracket was 28% as compared to 45% at baseline, with most households moving into the medium diet diversity bracket. However, the low dietary diversity bracket declined to 19% at endline from 25.3% at baseline. This pattern also shows for individual dietary diversity of children between 6 to 23 months, and women. Marketing and income Overall, almost 52% of the farmers producing OFSP sold part of their produce, though this figure was only 4% at baseline and in control areas. The introduction of OFSP and marketing support were thus the main drivers of this change. The average quantity sold was 1.064 kg/household with 3.308 kg per household in Chimbunila and 418 kg in Cuamba. In term of price, the average price was 4.29 MZN/kg ranging from 2.27 MZN/kg in Mandimba to 7.97 MZN/kg in Mecanhelas. For the place of market, most of the OFSP were sold by households in the main road near their house (32.2%), at home (28.6%) and at their nearest localities (22.6%). The objective of the project stated that at least 20% of the households earn at least US$50 per year (per season). Despite the inflation rate in Mozambique, households still achiveed an average revenue of US$ 60.78 with an exchange rate of 1US$=75 MZN. Chimbunila households earned US$ 148.56 per household - while in Cuamba and Mandimba the average was US$16.05 and US$19.89. These were the two districts that did not meet the US$50 target. The income generated from the selling of OFSP was mainly allocated to buy other types of foods (80.2%), clothes (67.2%), durable goods (45.6%) and school fees (32.8%). About 21.5% were for investment such as agriculture equipment (7.3%), phone (6.7%), radio (3.3%), bicycle (2.1%) and motorbike (2.1%). In terms of gender, 41% of men received OFSP income compared to 31.1% of women. The percentage of women receiving income was however higher than that of men in Lago (47.9% vs 20.5% and in Mandimba (42.6% vs 27.7%).