A research partnership between the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) evaluated the impacts of a climate resilience program designed for family farmers in the Brazilian Sertão (MAIS, Módulo Agroclimático Inteligente e Sustentável). Two papers describe the main results of this research. The first paper, published in the journal PLOS One, uses a combination of economic and wellbeing metrics to compare the performance of adopters (MAIS farmers) and non-adopters (control group). The second paper, published in the journal Climate and Development, uses quarterly data for MAIS farmers to analyze the evolution of technical efficiency. The studies highlight that the MAIS program had substantive and significant impacts on production practices, land management, and quality of life in general.

The MAIS program is a set of agricultural production practices and technologies with specific goals to improve milk and sheep meat yields. The program helped to support smallholder livestock and dairy farmers through seasonal and longer-run climate variability by teaching farmers to grow extra forage and manage herds appropriately, while also regenerating and protecting their natural capital assets. The practices introduced by the MAIS program also include achieving and maintaining compliance with the Brazilian Forest Code, which states that 20% of native habitat in semiarid regions must be maintained and conserved. The program was funded by the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) and was implemented by the Adapta Group between 2016 and 2018. The evaluation of the MAIS program was developed by Alexandre Gori Maia (UNICAMP), Rodrigo Lanna da Silveria (UNICAMP), Jennifer Burney (UCSD), Daniel Morales Martinez (UNICAMP), Camila Veneo Fonseca (UNICAMP), and Daniele Cesano (Adapta Group).

The paper published at the PLOS One (click here for full access) gathered data on labor and technology use, production practices, land management, farm income, and subjective wellbeing (SWB) among MAIS and non-MAIS farmers. The study controls for the lack of randomness in the designation of MAIS farmers using a set of identification strategies available for quasi-experimental designs. The study also decomposes the total difference between the MAIS and non-MAIS farmers into (i) differences due to observable characteristics, such as the access to technology and better production practices implemented by the MAIS program; and (ii) differences due to unobservable differences between MAIS and non-MAIS farmers to better understand program impacts and selection effects.

The paper highlights that basic and low-cost adaptive strategies may have remarkable impacts on the income and quality of life of smallholder farmers. Some main consistent achievements of the MAIS program were increasing the farm income and access to essential agricultural technologies. MAIS farmers fare better than non-MAIS farmers across several indicators of agricultural production and income, as they also reported better improvements in their work and life conditions. One caveat of the MAIS program is the null impact on the perceptions of improvements in food security. This may be because the program prioritized cash crop productions (milk and sheep meat) rather than the food sufficiency of impoverished farmers.

The second study, published at Climate and Development (click here for full access), followed 43 dairy farmers assisted by the MAIS program during consecutive nine quarters between 2016 and 2018. The data were collected during the technical assistance visits. The authors used stochastic frontier models to analyze the evolution and determinants of technical efficiency in dairy production. The results indicated that the average production and technical efficiency of the dairy farmers substantially improved with the duration of a locally-adapted technical orientation. Smallholder farmers assisted by the MAIS program improved their average milk production by nearly 10% per quarter, while the frontier of production increased by nearly 7% per quarter. They also identified that a milk cooling system might remarkably increase both the average and the frontier of production. However, temperature shocks are the main threat to the farmers’ efficiency.