Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services: Technology Profile - PICS Bags

Sixty percent of Zambians live in rural areas with limited infrastructure, and poverty and stunting levels are high across the country, particularly in Eastern Province. Women are engaged in agriculture, responsible for domestic food production and household nutrition, but often do not own or control productive resources, are excluded from decision-making processes, and have limited access to information, communications, infrastructure, and markets. The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index showed that only 40 percent of women in households with both adult men and women in the Eastern Province Feed the Future Zone of Influence have achieved gender parity. Lack of control over use of income and limited access to assets were strong contributors to this lack of parity. Improvements in small-scale agricultural production and processing, and reaching women, are necessary approaches given their active participation and potential. The Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services (INGENAES) project works to improve agricultural livelihoods by strengthening extension and advisory services to empower and engage smallholder farmers, men and women. The project aims to improve the dissemination of gender-appropriate and nutrition-enhancing technologies and inputs to improve women's agricultural productivity and enhance household nutrition. The technology profiles support INGENAES's goal by identifying issues and opportunities to make technologies more attractive for men and women farmers, to increase men's and women's benefits from using technologies, and to design distribution models for extension agents, input suppliers, and mobile devices to get the technologies into men's and women's hands. The Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS) triple layer bags are designed to store crops and reduce post-harvest losses from pests such as bruchids, also known as weevils. Researchers designed the PICS bags in 1986 to be easy to use, constructed from available and local materials, and to maintain the nutritional quality of the stored grains. The bags have been disseminated and widely adopted in West and Central Africa, with over 1.8 million PICS bags sold in five West African countries. In Zambia, PICS bags are not as widely distributed or adopted, but have been introduced through the Feed the Future Mawa project and the USAID-funded Production, Finance, and Improved Technology Plus (PROFIT+) program. PICS bags have the potential to decrease post-harvest losses of maize and other crops caused by weevils, improving food security and income generation opportunities. Research in West and Central Africa shows that targeted farmers are adopting the technology, with 34 percent of targeted farmers' harvest stored in PICS bags compared to seven percent in villages not targeted. In Zambia, both men and women reported learning about the bags through the Feed the Future Mawa project partner Zasaka's demonstration, and each farmer interviewed said he or she had personally made the decision to use PICS bags after watching a demonstration of how the bags are used. The bags were only available for purchase through the Mawa project and Zasaka.