Locking crops to unlock investment: Experimental evidence on warrantage in Burkina Faso

Warrantage is an innovative model of rural finance with the potential to overcome credit, crop storage, and behavioral constraints through a localized inventory credit system. Using a randomized controlled trial varying household level access to warrantage, we measure its impacts among households interested in participating. Among treated households, take-up of storage is high, while credit take-up is moderate. Treated households primarily store grains sell their production over an extended period, at a time when prices are higher resulting in higher sales revenue. Increased incomes are spent on long-term investments, including education, livestock, and agricultural inputs for the subsequent year. Data were collected from five sources: a census (Sept 2014), a baseline survey (Nov 2014), administrative records at storage (Dec 2014/Jan 2015) and destorage (May 2015), and an endline survey (Aug–Sept 2015). Household-level treatment assignment was determined via public lotteries conducted in each village. The sample includes 533 households who participated in the lottery and 183 non-participant households.