RE: What works in improving food security and nutrition in very poor communities? | Eval Forward

Dear Mustapha,

Thank you for you insightful response regarding the methodologies used in the Final evaluation of the Conservation Agriculture Scaling Up (CASU) project in Zambia.

On your first point regarding the sustainability of the adoption of conservation agriculture, indeed this was one of the primary concerns of the evaluation team. Although all data, both qualitative and quantitative, points to high levels of adoption of the techniques amongst the beneficiary farmers, the history of conservation agriculture promotion in Southern Africa suggests that this may not be the case in 5 - 10 years from now. The evaluation sought to highlight some of the reasons that may result in farmers 'disadopting' the conservation agriculture techniques. Among these:

  • CA has generally been introduced as a complete technological package without first considering farmers’ problems and constraints, which may either lie outside CA and/or inhibit its adoption.
  • Sub-Saharan Africa is extremely heterogeneous in climate, farming systems and traditions: a “one-size-fits-all” approach has never had a good record in terms of technology adoption.
  • Farmers have run into problems with inputs – namely labor, machines and equipment, fertilizers, and herbicides – as well as increased weed burdens and lack of residues for mulching

One important aspect of the CASU project was that participating 'lead farmers' were given a package of inputs and tools through a voucher scheme to allow them to demonstrate the benefits of using conservation agriculture. There were no inputs distributed during the final season of the project, although this did not affect farmer's application of the techniques - which is somewhat encouraging, as it shows that farmers continued using the techniques, even when they had to buy inputs themselves.

However, while the quantitative data pointed to high rates of adoption across the different conservation agriculture principles (minimum tillage, soil cover, crop rotation), the qualitative data painted a more nuanced picture - farmers had strong reservations regarding the extra labor required for conservation agriculture, particularly with regard to weeding, and many farmers said they would only continue applying the techniques if they could afford to buy chemical herbicides. Furthermore, those farmers who claimed to be strongly committed to practicing conservation agriculture noted that they would only do so on a small area of land, as it was too labor intensive to do so on a larger-scale, particularly without access to mechanization services.

For these reasons and more, the evaluation offers some critical findings related to the sustainability of the intervention, and calls for further research into alternatives for weed-control and the provision of mechanization services.

On your second point, regarding the sample-size for the household survey, indeed, the original proposal for the study outlined that the sample size for the final survey should be no smaller than 385 (calculated using a margin of error of 5% and a confidence level of 95%, based on the total population of beneficiary farmers). The intention was to revisit the same farmers who had been interviewed during the project's baseline survey. In practice, this was more difficult than anticipated, and the researchers could only locate 317 of the proposed 390 respondents. While this may have some implications on the robustness of the survey findings, it is important to recall that this is one of several data sources for the evaluation, including the project's own substantial M&E data, as well as the extensive qualitative data collected by the evaluation team across the different agro-ecological regions of Zambia, and all data was triangulated before drawing findings and conclusions. The report from the University of Zambia has been published as a standalone annex (Annex 2) to the main evaluation report, and you can find more information there.

The full evaluation report, as well as the annexes, are now available on the FAO Office of Evaluation website at: http://www.fao.org/evaluation/evaluation-digest/evaluations-detail/en/c/1147949/

 

Thank you again for your very insightful comments.

 

Kind regards,

Eoghan Molloy

 

Evaluation Officer

Office of Evaluation (OED)

Room D-320

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Viale delle Terme di Caracalla

00153 Rome, Italy