Rural Economy & Agriculture Dry Zone Community Survey

The READZ community survey was designed to track temporal changes occurring at the broader ‘landscape’ through use of multi-year recall questions. The community survey instrument included modules on the recent history of: village populations; access to educational facilities; modes of transport and travel times to nearby urban areas; access to irrigation facilities; crops grown; use of agricultural machinery; wages, labor costs and labor availability; inventories of agriculture related and non-farm businesses; land ownership; access to and terms of credit; climate change. Community questionnaires were administered during group interviews with four to six knowledgeable men and women in the 100 communities where the READZ household survey was implemented. To increase the survey’s spatial coverage and lend it greater statistical power, the survey was extended to a further 200 villages in ten additional Dry Zone townships (total 300 communities in 14 townships). These were also selected purposively, based on the main cropping systems present and distance from major urban areas, with the intent of incorporating a broad range of geographies