Organization and Performance of Cotton Sectors in Africa ... - infoDev

■■■■impression is given that they uniformly achieve the best yields. Similarly, thedominant narrative for poorer households is that cotton yields and profitabilityare compromised by equipment, cash, or labor shortages.Current local issues may receive undue attention. One example was the legalrequirement for Zimbabwean farmers to cut down their standing crops byAugust 15, following the harvest, which farmers in one area claimed was fartoo expensive to do because of labor shortages.If farmers are feeling dissatisfied with cotton (as many are for various reasons),they may inflate estimates of labor input to make a point. Facilitatorsneed to have some grasp of comparative data from elsewhere to interrogateinitial statements from focus group members where these statements appearquestionable. With probing questions, plus comparisons across differentgroups within the village, informants will often arrive at a more consideredfinal estimate.Where an extension agent is present during discussions, respondents may givethe “correct”—but untrue—answers in line with extension recommendations.Questions on input use appear particularly susceptible to this distortion, asobserved in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Zimbabwe. In one Zimbabwe focus group,researchers challenged the initial statements from group members about inputuse by the poorest groups. Eventually, respondents admitted that the lowergroups do not follow official recommendations and gave a “true” picture,which prompted the extension agent to confess to the researchers afterwardthat he had never realized this!Finally, there is a question of what constitutes a “normal” year. In Tanzania,2003/04 and 2004/05 were bumper harvests, with national yields around 50percent higher than the long-term average. Focus group estimates of normalperformance reflected these recent good years. However, 2005/06 was adrought year, with national production a third of its level in the previoustwo seasons. As a result, seed cotton prices were driven up by companiesscrambling to obtain scarce supplies. It is clear that an indicative budgetshould not combine the good yields of 2003/04 and 2004/05 with the highprices of 2005/06. In Mozambique, a similar situation prevailed, with a nearrecord harvest in 2005/06.The issue of what constitutes a “normal” year can be handled by some initialdata adjustments, combined with the construction of alternative scenarios forsome countries. The data adjustments for the base cases are as follows:■In Tanzania, reported yields were used (consistent with national performancein 2003/04 and 2004/05) in the budgets, but seed cotton prices wereadjusted downward (from those recorded in 2005/06) to reflect plausibleprices in a good harvest year. This change is achieved by setting the averageseed cotton price to 65 percent of the free-on-truck lint equivalent price(the share received by farmers in 2004/05). Seed cotton pricing in TanzaniaYIELDS AND RETURNS TO FARMERS 135