Background: Gender disparities in access to inputs, markets, financial inclusion, and participation in strategic value chains are major developmental challenges in emerging economies. Participation in the edible insect value chain has become an essential source of income, food, and nutrition in some African countries. This paper uses a bivariate probit model to examine the gender differentials for primary mopane worm harvesters' participation in primary processing and market participation during COVID-19 in South-Eastern Zimbabwe. Using a structured questionnaire, the data was gathered from 393 primary harvesters in five purposively selected wards in the Gwanda District of Zimbabwe. This study examines the gender differentials for primary mopane worm harvesters' participation in primary processing and market participation during COVID-19 in south-Eastern Zimbabwe.
Results: Results show that women are likelier to participate in primary value addition to preparing for the lean season opportunities. There are gender differentials in the participation in markets during COVID-19. Results show a significant negative relationship between participants' ages and female engagement in mopane processing and a positive correlation with female involvement in lean COVID-19 season marketing. Male harvesters' participation in the lean market during the COVID-19 pandemic was significantly correlated positively with age and education level, while the choice to participate in the lean market was negatively correlated with the dependency ratio.
Conclusions: Collaborative, community-centric, and gender-accommodative development of the mopane worm value chain is important. Focal issues are on supporting primary value addition for lean season market participation and during market shocks such as COVID-19. This can be a leap towards gender equality and improving livelihoods of women and men in mopane harvesting areas. The study recommends marketing and district-specific policies explicitly addressing mopane worm harvesting and marketing affects market participation and primary value-addition decisions.
In the context of Uganda, this study delves into gender-based strategies aimed at enhancing women's engagement in milk safety, value addition and marketing within smallholder livestock farming. The objectives were twofold: first, to document the current practices of women in milk safety, value addition, and marketing channels; second, to examine the constraints, opportunities, and strategies related to the production of safe milk and milk products, along with accessing sustainable markets. Conducted in four sub-counties of Kiruhura district, this research employed both qualitative participatory methods and structured questionnaires, including twelve focused group discussions and twenty key informant interviews with both women and men. Notably, 217 structured questionnaires were administered. The findings illuminate that women play a central role in milk processing, water provisioning, sanitation, hygiene practices and were the primary contributors to milk value addition, particularly in the production of butter and ghee. Despite their active involvement, women face challenges in accessing adequate milk quantities, employ traditional labor-intensive procedures and encounter difficulties in marketing their processed products. Men, often the household heads, held decision-making authority over milk consumption and control the selling of milk, contributing to gender disparities. Addressing these challenges necessitates comprehensive support, including training and capacity-building initiatives for both men and women in milk value addition, credit access, and market entry. The study underscores the potential for improved women's access to milk quantities, particularly for butter and ghee production, to strengthen rural livelihoods and boost dairy production in Uganda.
Measuring sustainability at farm level is a priority for both research and policy and requires sustainability indicators to track progress. Indicators make the sustainability concept more concrete and guide farm level decisions, playing a decisive role in determining food system impacts on societies and the environment. Data availability is often a limiting factor when choosing indicators, but not enough attention is paid to the role of data in indicator construction and assessment results. This paper assessed the critical role of data in indicator construction and the potential limitations that current data availability imposes on farm-level sustainability assessments, using the example of dairy farms in Sweden. To do so we used a five-step approach consisting of a literature review, an inventory of data sources, an expert consultation, a matching and gap analysis, and a critical assessment. We found that 20 indicators categorized under 12 out of 20 sustainability themes had measurement issues due to missing scope, temporary data, or additional data requirements. At least some indicators were measurable within all themes in the social and economic dimensions while all indicators for pesticides, non-renewable energy, and soil quality in the environmental dimension had measurement issues. In the critical assessment, we argue that for some indicators, there are trade-offs between data availability and issues of comprehensibility and analytical validity. Furthermore, we found that no single data source could be used to measure all themes; which means that merging of different data sets is needed for a broader on-farm sustainability assessment. Our findings are relevant for the discussion on sustainability indicators and will inform future programs aimed at collecting sustainability data at farm level, which should consider the broad data needs identified and the potential to merge data to enable holistic sustainability assessments.