Reviewing the evidence for

participation and the ‘how’

Lawrence Haddad

www.alineplanning.org
 This is a second chance
for agriculture
• Renewed focus on agricultural development
• Greater resources to initiatives that aim to make a
difference to poor farmers’ lives
• “The next Green Revolution ....must be guided by
small-holder farmers, adapted to local circumstances,
and sustainable for the economy and the environment”
Bill Gates, World Food Prize speech. October 2009.

• But, are we being guided by smallholder farmers?

• M&E is the key way of guiding agricultural resources so
that they achieve impact

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 Farmer involvement in M&E:
Farmer Nowhere
“Current M&E practice tends to provide
good accountability to”
n=171

57%

28%

...donors ...beneficiaries

ALINe stakeholder survey.

Lindstrom and Ponsford 2009 www.alineplanning.org
What would partnership with
farmers look like?
• Shared goals
• Cooperative pooling of talents
• Mutual responsibility
• Shared gains and risks

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 Shared Goals
A mixed methods evaluation of a participatory soil conservation
project in 41 communities in Honduras
• Participation led to changes in types of technologies tested
• Participating farmers were more likely to innovate due to
intervention
• This led to increased adoption and higher yields (at least x3
for vast majority)
• The cost of inputs per hectare under participatory conservation
was $208. Similar projects in region without participatory
methods recorded costs of at least $2000 per hectare

Johnson, N. L.; Lilja, N. and Ashby, J.A. (2003) Measuring the

impact of user participation in agricultural and natural resource
management research’, Agricultural Systems 78, pp 287–306
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 Cooperative Pooling of Talents
A systematic review of 121 diverse rural water projects
in Asia, Africa and Latin America
• Indicators examined: percentage of water systems in
good condition, percentage of target population
reached and value of benefits
• Strong statistical evidence: a 10 per cent increase in
participation of the rural poor in these projects
resulted in a 2 per cent increase in overall
performance
Isham, J.; Narayan, D. and Pritchett, L. (1994) Does participation
improve project performance : establishing causality with subjective
data, Policy Research Working Paper Series 1357, The World Bank

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 Mutual Responsibility
Randomised control trial of community-based monitoring
of public primary health care providers in Uganda

• Citizen report cards reduced child mortality by 33 per

cent
• The study documents large increases in utilisation
and improved health outcomes
• Cost per child death averted was $300, well below the
average of $887 for 23 other interventions.

Björkman, M and Svensson, J. (2009) 'Power to the People:

Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment on Community
Based Monitoring in Uganda’, The Quarterly Journal of
Economics, Vol 124: 2, pp 735–69

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 Shared Gains and Risks
A study of collaborative rice breeding in Nepal
• Varieties selected by farmers during on-farm
trials had superior combinations of yield and
maturity compared to the breeders‘ selections
• Varieties spread from farmer to farmer without
the need for intervention from scientists

Source: Gyawali, S., Sunwar, S., Subedi, M., Tripathi, M.,

Joshi, K.D. and Witcombe, J.R. (2007) 'Collaborative
breeding with farmers can be effective', Field Crops
Research, Vol. 101:1, pp 88-95

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Why don’t we see more partnerships with
farmers?
• Value added: not visible enough, despite
studies
• Practicality: can it work in real time?
• Incentives: ground-truthing hurts and career
advancement is not dependent on it
• Power: we don’t have to -- “grace and favour”
• Trust: “The poor man who enters into a
partnership with one who is rich makes a risky
venture” Titus Maccius Plautus
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Farmer partnerships are vital to fix
the broken feedback loop

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 ALINe: people-centred performance
measurement systems
• Research on agricultural measurement issues
• Specialist advice on systematic farmer feedback systems
• Work with innovators in the sector through the Farmer
Voice Initiative to learn from their experiences, share
good practice
• Pilot and evaluate new approaches to farmer feedback
• Builds on work done by CIAT, ILAC, Farmer First
Revisited and those outside of agriculture, including
private sector

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 Deja Vu All Over Again?
• Now more evidence that participation can add
value
• New approaches developed —outcome
mapping, participatory impact pathways
• New IC technologies stimulate practical
methods for direct feedback
• Agriculture will not get a third chance for a
long time—this time around it has to
demonstrate impact on people

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 But, donors need to
“initiate discomfort”
• True leadership is the installing of
systems that might cause future
discomfort in support of the greater good
• Feedback systems will improve
– Client accountability
– Advocacy
– Learning
– Outcomes

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 We need more people-centred
performance assessment
Between A
“Farmer meaningful
First” and partnership
“Farmer with
Nowhere” farmers
Farmers
Food
security
and
nutrition
Practitioners Investors

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