expected timing of the sub-plot harvest. There were no instructions given to the households on timing of the crop cut. They were, however, requested to harvest the cassava within the sub-plot whenever _they_ were ready and were asked to contact the enumerator and/or the crop cutting assistant beforehand to arrange a time. For districts where households typically harvest their cassava at once, the crop cutting exercise was then done at the time of the main harvest. In districts where cassava is harvested over several weeks or months, the respondents would simply inform the enumerator when they were ready to harvest that piece of land. Together with the enumerator and the crop cutting assistant, the respondents would harvest the 5x5 sub-plot, and weigh the cassava using the same type of weighing scale as distributed to diary households. All crop cutting production was reported in KGs, with details collected on cassava lost prior to harvest and the number of plants harvested.

# **3.3. Production Measurement and Expected Inter-Relationships**

The analysis focuses on household-level annual cassava production computed in kilograms. Since all diary households were provided with a hanging scale, they were expected to record all entries in kilograms on a daily-basis. The production for the diary households is simply the total of the daily records solicited during the 12 months of fieldwork. All diary data was recorded and weighed “fresh”, as respondents weighed the cassava directly after harvesting from the plots. The diary did not collect plot-specific harvest information, but rather information on the total cassava harvest for the household on a specific day.F<sup>23</sup> On the recall front, the respondents reported production at the plot-levelP23F<sup>24</sup> ; could use standard as well as non-standard measurement units; and could have reported the harvest condition as fresh or dry – following the prevailing practices in household and farm surveys and the approach as part of the Malawi IHS. Consequently, the recall respondents reported production for 74 percent of cassava plots in 50-kilogram bags; 19 percent in kilograms; and 3 percent in 70-kilogram bags. The production on the remaining plots were recorded in pails and pieces (each differentiated as small, medium or large), and in _gondolos_ (non-standard, cylindrical baskets that can vary in size and that are often attached to bicycles to carry produce). To convert these non-standard units to kilograms, we used the regional conversion factors readily available from the Malawi IHS

> 23 The harvest that was weighed could have also been expressed in terms of non-standard measurement units used in the recall arms, as such the kilogram equivalences obtained for the non-standard measurement units for fresh cassava harvest could have been used as ancillary data for gauging the sensitivity of the recall-based production estimates that would have been reported in non-standard units. In the end, most of the cassava harvests in the diaries ended up being expressed in 50-kilogram bags (alongside their objective weights in kilograms), as the diary households relied on the sacks that were distributed to them.

> 24 To address any potential for differences arising from the diary reporting at the household-level and recall reporting at the plot-level, the analysis was run on the subsample of households cultivating only one cassava plot and the relationships between the four treatment arms remained the same.

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