After more than two decades of hiatus agriculture is back on the agenda of donors and governments. Issues of harmonisation, results orientation, mutual accountability and payments for performance have become mantras in development assistance. Placing intended beneficiaries at the centre stage is the new motto.
But the articles in this seminal IDS Bulletin provide systematic evidence to lay open the widely shared secret among development practitioners that the cupboard of agricultural monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is bare. Agricultural M&E has been weak at best. Where it exists it has concentrated on tools and methods, a narrow focus on project performance ratings and ‘rates of return’ with accountability upwards to donors rather than downwards to the intended beneficiaries of programmes.
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Overview: Getting a More Balanced View of What is Working in Agriculture to Reduce Hunger
Yvonne Pinto
The Sorry State of M&E in Agriculture: Can People-centred Approaches Help? Lawrence Haddad, Johanna Lindstrom and Yvonne Pinto
Commentary on ‘The Sorry State of M&E in Agriculture: Can People-centred Approaches Help?’ Zenda Ofir
Evaluation: Why, for Whom and How? Henry Lucas and Richard Longhurst
Three Approaches to Monitoring: Feedback Systems, Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation and Logical Frameworks Alex Jacobs, Chris Barnett and Richard Ponsford
A Revolution Whose Time Has Come? The Win-Win of Quantitative Participatory Approaches and Methods Robert Chambers
Creating the Missing Feedback Loop Alex Jacobs
Private Sector Metrics Contributions to Social Change: Customer Satisfaction Meets Agriculture Development David Bonbright and Jamey Power
Commentary on ‘Private Sector Metrics Contributions to Social Change: Customer Satisfaction Meets Agriculture Development’ Edward Mabaya
Monitoring and Evaluating Agricultural Science and Technology Projects: Theories, Practices and Problems Erik Millstone, Patrick Van Zwanenberg and Fiona Marshall
Incorporating Seasonality into Agricultural Project Design and Learning Stephen Devereux and Richard Longhurst
Context-specific and Project-induced Risk: Designing Projects for Promoting Resilient Livelihoods Rachel Sabates-Wheeler, Saul Butters and Martin Greeley
Women’s Empowerment, Development Interventions and the Management of Information Flows Naila Kabeer
A Learning Approach to Monitoring and Evaluation Katy Oswald and Peter Taylor
Commentary on ‘Latin American Experiences on Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning’ Osvaldo Feinstein
Does Research Reduce Poverty? Assessing the Impacts of Policy-oriented Research in Agriculture Andy Sumner, Edoardo Masset and Rajendra Mulmi
Commentary on ‘Does Research Reduce Poverty? Assessing the Impacts of Policyoriented Research in Agriculture’ Raghav Gaiha and Shantanu Mathur
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