Institute of Development Studies

Improving impact planning and learning in agricultural programmes

17 April 2009 - Caroline Davies

It is recognised that there is currently a new and widespread commitment within the development community to invest in agriculture as a way of reducing poverty and hunger. Three quarters of the one billion people surviving on less than $1 a day live and work in rural areas, and most rely on agriculture for their food and income. However it is imperative that these new investments are as successful as possible. In order to meet the desired outcomes of hunger reduction and poverty alleviation, success has to be defined, planned for, navigated towards and demonstrated when present. Currently efforts to learn about and plan for impacts of agricultural projects are fractured and of variable quality. Tools are available but not widely used, new tools are needed but not being developed, institutional incentives to use assessment data are weak, capacity is thinly spread and investments in this area continue to be an afterthought. These and other factors make it necessary to ask ourselves:

• Why is it so hard to measure success in agricultural development
• How can agencies strengthen dialogue with farmers about what works?
• How can we learn better from experience?

These are just some of the questions that the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and its partner, Keystone Accountability are seeking to address as they explore the potential design of an Agriculture Learning and Impacts Network (ALINe). In the context of a 15-month grant to IDS from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IDS and Keystone will be working with key stakeholders to identify needs, map capacities, and locate interest in co-developing the content and infrastructure of the network towards a possible launch in 2010. Core functions of ALINe's work could include: analysis and critical reflection, knowledge management, capacity development and learning, as well as project-specific support.

As a first step in this consultation process, Lawrence Haddad, Peter Taylor and Edoardo Masset from IDS and Alex Jacobs from Keystone Accountability presented a workshop on Challenges in Agricultural Development for Impact Evaluation at the recent international conference in Cairo on Perspectives on Impact Assessment: Approaches to Assessing Development Effectiveness organised by AfrEA, NONIE and 3ie. A conference report will be available on the ALINe website.

In this planning phase, ALINe is conducting research to identify the key factors which contribute to successful agricultural development and how it can in turn promote poverty reduction. Areas include assessing, mitigating and adapting to project-induced risk, looking at how to build seasonality awareness into projects and exploring gendered models of social change in agriculture. This research will be collated to propose better indicators in challenging areas. Other areas of ALINe's work include piloting innovative approaches to Impact Planning and Learning (IPL) and developing tools to support IPL needs.

Visit the ALINe website to find out more.

Caroline Davies is the Project Manager for ALINe Project Manager at IDS

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Related Projects

• ALINe - There is a new and widespread commitment within the development community to invest in agriculture as a way of reducing poverty and hunger. Three quarters of the one billion people surviving on less than $1 a day live and work in rural areas, and most rely on agriculture for their food and income. Investing in agriculture is key to lifting the world's poor out of hunger and poverty. (Ongoing)