Thank you for providing the link to your reflections on M&E. A telling and thought-provoking read. I especially liked, yet was surprised at how, the issues you raise persist, notably:
# 3 On the limited consequence of research plots (on farm?) regarding the spread of practice/technology on the farmer's other plots and/or among other farmers in the community.
- And all in the face of farming systems research with its focus on systems thinking and Chamber's work on farmer first dating back to the 1980's. How can we remind people associated with today's Agriculture Market Systems Programmes of these, and others lessons?
# 4 On how donors assume that land, not labour is the limiting factor with the unlettered indicator of choice being physical or financial runs to land - yields - without bothering to find out why which smallholder farmers cultivate what.
- Your reference, later into the document, to Kipling's poem "White Man's Burden" reminded me of William Easterly's book with the same (borrowed) title. His central message is about how imposition by the west of large, grand schemes thought up by "friends of Africa" - Tony Blair' Africa Commission, Sachs and Millennium Villages and Obama's Feed the Future programme. In Agriculture, unlike Health and Education, farmers are not patients treated by doctors or pupils taught by teachers, they are the experts.
Last week there was an interesting EvalForward webinar on Evaluation and Climate Resilience. One thing that interested me was how little the evaluations revealed about indigenous "Climate Smart" agriculture. The term seems limited to practice being introduced to farming communities without necessarily learning about how, for example, indigenous concepts of soil-moisture dynamics could explain contrasting seasonal and inter-annual fluctuations in agricultural productivity, nutrition, health, mortality and even marriage rates across a soil-type boundary.
#11 On how M&E is more about covering up failure and its fit with taxpayer expectations. Peter Dahler Larssen's (mindless) Evaluation Machines define a god example of what I think you refer to here. He and Estelle Raimondo presented a great expose of current evaluation practice at last year's European Evaluation Conference. On the taxpayer issue, there some interesting research a few years ago that highlighted how UK taxpayers don't want numbers, rather stories of how and why Aid works, or not. Thing is, DFID is not accountable to the UK taxpayer, but the Treasury (who want numbers). Numbers, as Dahler-Larden and Raimondo say, is one of evaluations blind spots.
Apologies for the Monday afternoon rant, and thanks again for pitching in with your writing.
RE: A lack of learning in the monitoring and evaluation of agriculture projects
Dear Richard,
Thank you for providing the link to your reflections on M&E. A telling and thought-provoking read. I especially liked, yet was surprised at how, the issues you raise persist, notably:
# 3 On the limited consequence of research plots (on farm?) regarding the spread of practice/technology on the farmer's other plots and/or among other farmers in the community.
- And all in the face of farming systems research with its focus on systems thinking and Chamber's work on farmer first dating back to the 1980's. How can we remind people associated with today's Agriculture Market Systems Programmes of these, and others lessons?
# 4 On how donors assume that land, not labour is the limiting factor with the unlettered indicator of choice being physical or financial runs to land - yields - without bothering to find out why which smallholder farmers cultivate what.
- Your reference, later into the document, to Kipling's poem "White Man's Burden" reminded me of William Easterly's book with the same (borrowed) title. His central message is about how imposition by the west of large, grand schemes thought up by "friends of Africa" - Tony Blair' Africa Commission, Sachs and Millennium Villages and Obama's Feed the Future programme. In Agriculture, unlike Health and Education, farmers are not patients treated by doctors or pupils taught by teachers, they are the experts.
Last week there was an interesting EvalForward webinar on Evaluation and Climate Resilience. One thing that interested me was how little the evaluations revealed about indigenous "Climate Smart" agriculture. The term seems limited to practice being introduced to farming communities without necessarily learning about how, for example, indigenous concepts of soil-moisture dynamics could explain contrasting seasonal and inter-annual fluctuations in agricultural productivity, nutrition, health, mortality and even marriage rates across a soil-type boundary.
#11 On how M&E is more about covering up failure and its fit with taxpayer expectations. Peter Dahler Larssen's (mindless) Evaluation Machines define a god example of what I think you refer to here. He and Estelle Raimondo presented a great expose of current evaluation practice at last year's European Evaluation Conference. On the taxpayer issue, there some interesting research a few years ago that highlighted how UK taxpayers don't want numbers, rather stories of how and why Aid works, or not. Thing is, DFID is not accountable to the UK taxpayer, but the Treasury (who want numbers). Numbers, as Dahler-Larden and Raimondo say, is one of evaluations blind spots.
Apologies for the Monday afternoon rant, and thanks again for pitching in with your writing.