The Impact of Beekeeping on Livelihood and Yield of Coffee and Other Pollinator Dependent Crops: A Group-based Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia

Last registered on September 20, 2023

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The Impact of Beekeeping on Livelihood and Yield of Coffee and Other Pollinator Dependent Crops: A Group-based Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0011816
Initial registration date
September 16, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
September 20, 2023, 10:55 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe)

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Head, Social Science and Impact Assessment unit at icipe
PI Affiliation
Post Doctorial Fellow, icipe
PI Affiliation
Professor, Development Economics Group, Wageningen UR (University & Research centre)
PI Affiliation
Professor, Addis Ababa University, Center for Development Studies
PI Affiliation
Programme Coordinator, icipe Ethiopia Office
PI Affiliation
Professor, Addis Ababa University, Center for Development Studies

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2023-06-20
End date
2024-09-30
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
In this experiment, we will evaluate the incremental pollination and income (livelihood) benefits of beehives provided to youths in selected districts of Ethiopia. The More Young Entrepreneurs in Silk and Honey (MOYESH) programme, implemented by icipe, is organizing youths in groups, providing training, technical support and beehives to enable the youths to generate income. We will evaluate the effectiveness of the programme on the income of the youths and on the yield of coffee using a clustered Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) design. This study will have one treatment and one control arm. The treated groups are youths who are randomly assigned to the programme intervention and who receive full programme interventions and the control groups do not receive any intervention. Each arm has 300 enterprises. The primary outcome variable is the income of the youths from honey production and complementary activities and the yield of coffee (ton/ha). The secondary outcome variables are the yield of other pollination-dependent crops around the apiary site and total honey production by the youth enterprises. We will collect baseline, follow up and endline data on enterprise performance indicators, apiary and member characteristics. The data will be analyzed using Analysis of covariance and simple linear regression.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Abro, Zewdu et al. 2023. "The Impact of Beekeeping on Livelihood and Yield of Coffee and Other Pollinator Dependent Crops: A Group-based Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia." AEA RCT Registry. September 20. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11816-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) has been implementing a youth livelihood program called More Young Entrepreneurs in Silk and Honey (MOYESH) since October 2019. The Programme aims to create decent jobs for more than 100,000 unemployed young men and women in rural areas by building their technical and entrepreneurship skills, providing starter kits such as beehives and protective clothes, and linking with financial and market services. The Programme delivers these services to youth groups and individuals to establish beekeeping and sericulture framing businesses working in communal lands and community watersheds to produce honey and engage in related businesses such as crop and seedling production and animal fattening. The youth enterprises are expected to produce more than 30,000 tons of honey and generate more than US$120 million income from honey, silk, and complementary by 2024. In addition to income and honey production, the beekeeping activity promotes ecosystem services through increasing cross-pollination of crops such as coffee farms.
To evaluate the incremental effect of managed bees on the productivity of pollinator-dependent crops, we will provide two beehives for the youths, and they will produce honey and related products following conventional program activities. The apiary sites (beehives) will be put inside/near pollinator-dependent crops such as coffee. The control groups will not receive any of the interventions. This design will enable us not only to estimate the pollination benefits of supplying beehives but also the MOYESH’s impact on youth livelihood.
Intervention Start Date
2023-07-24
Intervention End Date
2024-08-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1. Income of the youth groups
2. Yield of coffee plots (ton per hectare)
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The first primary outcome variable will be computed by aggregating the income of the youth enterprises from their all income-generating activities (both honey production and side businesses). The second primary outcome variable, the yield of coffee, is computed by dividing total annual coffee harvest by the area of the plot from which the coffee is harvested.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Yield of other pollination-dependent crops around the apiary site and total honey production by the youth enterprises.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) has been implementing a youth livelihood program called More Young Entrepreneurs in Silk and Honey (MOYESH) since October 2019. The Programme aims to create decent jobs for more than 100,000 unemployed young men and women in rural areas by building their technical and entrepreneurship skills, providing starter kits such as beehives and protective clothes, and linking with financial and market services. The Programme delivers these services to youth groups and individuals to establish beekeeping and sericulture framing businesses working in communal lands and community watersheds to produce honey and engage in related businesses such as crop and seedling production and animal fattening. The youth enterprises are expected to produce more than 30,000 tons of honey and generate more than US$120 million income from honey, silk, and complementary by 2024. In addition to income and honey production, the beekeeping activity promotes ecosystem services through increasing cross-pollination of crops such as coffee farms.
To evaluate the incremental effect of managed bees on the productivity of pollinator-dependent crops, we will provide two beehives for the youths, and they will produce honey and related products following conventional program activities. The apiary sites (beehives) will be put inside/near pollinator-dependent crops such as coffee. The control groups will not receive any of the interventions. This design will enable us not only to estimate the pollination benefits of supplying beehives but also the MOYESH’s impact on youth livelihood.

The village-level randomized assignment procedure has a treatment arm and a control group.
1. Control group: This refers to youth who will not receive any intervention by the program.
2. Treatment group This is the youths who are organized in groups and receive the regular MOYESH package (technical and business skills training, beehives with bee colonies, and other hive tools).
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization will be done using a computer by the Stata program.
Randomization Unit
The village is the randomization unit. Each village is randomly assigned to a treatment and control group.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
80 Villages (40 treatment and 40 control).
Sample size: planned number of observations
800 observations (enterprises).
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
400 control and 400 treatment enterprises. Each village will have 10 enterprises which means 800 enterprises (400 control and 400 treatment).
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
The minimum detectable effect is 20%. The desired power (β=0.80), alpha adjusted for multiple hypothesis testing (α=0.03561997), intra-cluster correlation (rho=0.99611), number of individuals per cluster (n=10), mean of coffee yield (ton/ha) (µ= 6.101442) and standard deviation (δ= 1.831227).
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
The International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology Ethical Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2023-06-06
IRB Approval Number
N/A
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials