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Wed, 14 May 2014 11:11:37 +0200 |
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This is Dr. Atse M. Yapi again. I read with interest Binta's contribution (Message 13) and would like to make few comments and suggestions:
1) Binta you want to assessment the impacts (in terms of income, crop yield and food security) of new farming techniques introduced to family farmers in Senegal; and you are not sure about the best methodology to adopt to get the job done. From your objectives, it may be best to adopt a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods of assessment. The rationale here as I see it is that the new farming techniques have succeeded to increase productivity and production of food for those farmers who adopted the new techniques as opposed to those who did not adopt them. You could assess this through on farm survey of farmers in the different areas of importance for the new technologies. The survey should be structured in a way that would allow the average yield gains to be calculated, factor productivity measures as well as income improvement measures to be estimated.
2) It may be possible that project funding agencies would like to know whether the impact of the project is worth the investment. For this reason, you may consider using the net present value approach together with the economic surplus method to arrive at the internal rate of return to the project investment. This will imply that you structure the survey in a way that will allow you to have an idea of the adoption curve and make inference about the life span of the new technology. Note that the economic surplus method is based on the understanding that the adoption of the new techniques produces benefits to both producers (farmers) and consumers (buyers of the products). The benefits to farmers come from the reduction in unit production costs (higher yield) as well as greater output for the market. The benefits to consumers come from a price reduction due to greater output on the market due to high productivity and production.
3) Finally, I am curious to know how many farmers were self-selected to participate in the project? How is their number compared to the total population of farmers in the targeted areas for the new technologies? In the donors' point of view, an impact assessment over those farmers who have participated in the project may not be a good yardstick to assess the performance of their investment into the project. They may wish to see how their investment contributed to food security in the targeted areas. Besides, it is well known that farmers learn quite fast from their neighbors. If they see their neighbors doing well by adopting a new technology, they also tend to do the same. The implication here is that the timing of the assessment of the impact of the project is crucial and should not come just after the completion of the project; but some years after the project in order to allow technology adoption from non-participating farmers to take place, thus increasing the impact of the new technologies.
Hoping that this is of some help, I wish you all the best in your research efforts.
Dr. Atse M. Yapi
Agriculture and Natural Resource Policy Consultant
FAO Regional Office for Africa
Box 1628
Accra,
Ghana
Email: Atse.Yapi (at) fao.org ; atseyapi25 (at) yahoo.com
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