RE: Enhancing funding and service delivery in agriculture: any ideas? | Eval Forward

In a recent country program evaluation I was involved in, we found that one of the main challenges faced by the Agriculture sector was the lack of adequate funding. In fact, the country was in a crisis context and most of the funding (national and international) was going to life saving and other humanitarian related activities. In addition, the donor community made it clear that long term agriculture development was not among their top priorities. To address this issue, UN agencies, such as FAO, played an important role in promoting agriculture as a key entry point to address the priority issues from the donor perspective. For instance, it was highlighted that the highest incidents of poverty, youth unemployment, gender inequalities, and social conflicts in the country are registered in rural areas, and therefore creating economic opportunities in these areas is essential to address these challenges. Donors’ interest in Agriculture was therefore renewed and translated into funding interventions to support small scale farming and institutional capacity development of the agriculture actors.

In summary, it is important for the policy/decision makers in the agriculture sector, depending on country context and underlying donors’ interests, to ensure their projects’ proposals are well packaged so they “speak the language” of potential donors in order to increase their chances of funding.