My contributions
Monitoring and evaluation: is this the perfect combination to meet the needs of decision-makers?
DiscussionNeutrality-impartiality-independence. At which stage of the evaluation is each concept important?
DiscussionThe farmer as a key participant of M&E: lessons and experiences from Participatory M&E systems
DiscussionRecurring errors in public policies and major projects: contributions and solutions from evaluation
Discussion
Richard Tinsley
Professor Emeritus Colorado State UniversityMeasuring What Matter – Critical Overlooked Evaluation Parameters
Based on the sub-title of this evaluation please allow me to expand on a couple critical but overlooked parameters that once included could substantially change the way we assist smallholder communities and perhaps better was to scale up their acceptance of innovations intended to assist them improve their well-being. Thes parameters may possibly be visibly seen without even interviewing farmers, or at least any interviewed data visibly confirmed.
The critical parameter is “Timing of Field Operations.” Has anyone ever considered this? How long does it take for farmers to complete basic tasks such as crop establishment, weeding, harvesting, and threshing? How does this compare with what development specialists anticipate? Why are there such delays? Typically, the expected time for crop establishment is only 2 weeks, however if carefully evaluated for manual farming, as most smallholder still do, it would be accuratly identified as stretching for over 8 weeks. Well beyond the time anticipated for optimum implementation of intermediate activities such weeding, and with well understood decline in yield potential. A simple physical observation of the fields associated with a project community would easily show this spread in crop establishment. The delay is normally casually noted by the development personnel but not evaluated and attributed to poor motivation, education on the importance for early planting, or spreading risk. I tend to dismiss all of these and add another more likely possibility. That is farmers have limited dietary calories relative to what is needed for a full day of agronomic field work. We tend to recognize farmers are poor and hungry but fail to factor hunger as a hinderance to crop management. This would be another critically overlooked parameter, with surprisingly little solid data. What limited data is available shows smallholder would be lucky to have access to 2500 kcal/day which after allowing 2000 kcal/day for basic metabolism leaves only 500 kcal/day for manual exertion. Against this limited diet the dietary requirement for a full day of agronomic field work is 4000 kcal. With only 500 kcal workday is limited to a couple diligent hours perhaps paced for a couple more hours at lower diligence. It noted to Kenyan introduce to the topic that in Kenya the casual workday is only 5 hours. If we added this to our evaluation parameters, would we get a better understanding of what smallholders are facing and provide guidance to better means for scaling up crop management and food security? However, it has to be recognized as a major hinderance to scaling agronomic acceptance before it will be included as a necessary parameter for evaluations.
Another way to quickly approach to the problem and perhaps confirm the need to address the issue, is to simply make a field visit to where it is possible to observe a variety of farms and see how many people are working in the field in the morning and again after lunch. I expect there will be a substantial decline for the afternoon observation. That was the case in Madibira, Tanzania, the 3000-ha irrigated rice project I worked on, and stimulated my interest in the dietary energy balance concern.
If dietary energy is a critical issue in scaling agriculture production, how critical will it be facilitating smallholder access to contract mechanization to reduce the drudgery for smallholder farmers and enhance the time it takes for crop establishment and allow them to concentrate of other important crop management activities? The importance of mechanization to smallholder farming can be easily seen in paddy producing Asia where some 30+ years ago farmers shifted from water buffalo to power tillers. While there is limited data on it impact, I get the impression it half the crop establishment period, increased the area individual farmer could manage, comfortable allow for double cropping irrigated rice and when small combines were added allowed for 5 rice crops every 2 years. Also, look at Egypt where contract land preparation with tractors has been the common practice for at least 40 years I can account for. Is it possible to scale up smallholder production without facilitating access to mechanization? It might be worth noting that a return visit to Madibira 5 years after the advisor effort ended, the farmers had obtained 50 Asian power tillers for use in the paddy irrigation scheme plus 4 4-wheel tractors for use on the adjacent upland areas. If the development community has limited interest in mechanization the farmers certainly do. The critical need to the financial arrangements that will allow individual owner/operators to obtain the necessary tractors to serve their communities.
Please note the referenced article I prepared reflecting on my 50+ years working with smallholder communities. The article is more interested in factual accuracy than political correctness with a major section on Dietary Energy Balance and critical need for mechanization for smallholder communities. The link is: https://agsci.colostate.edu/smallholderagriculture/wp-content/uploads/sites/77/2023/03/Reflections.pdf
Thank you