IMPACT-L Archives

Moderated conference on impact assessment of agricultural research: May 2014

Impact-L@LISTSERV.FAO.ORG

Options: Use Forum View

Use Proportional Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Reply To:
Date:
Thu, 29 May 2014 09:18:05 +0200
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (23 lines)
This is Atse M. Yapi again, trying to respond to the first of the concerns of Alice Bonou in her message (nr. 81). 

Alice wrote: "For my PhD research, I am trying to estimate the impact of 2012 flooding on the livelihood of farmers in the Niger Basin (micro-level Impact Evaluation). I have some concerns and would appreciate your help regarding them: My first concern is which outcome of interest will be appropriate (yield, income, total expenditure, school expenditure, health expenditure, calorie intake, subjective wellbeing....)?"

Alice, I must say that I am surprised that you want to estimate the impact on farmers' livelihood of an intervention undertaken two years ago (2012 flooding). I wish to recall the sequential impact pathway in Results Based Management (RBM) in which INPUTS are used in ACTIVITIES to produce OUTPUTS, which when properly used lead to OUTCOMES which when sustained produce long term effects called IMPACT. I have the feeling that what you are after is an estimation of the results/outcomes of an experiment (the 2012 flooding) you conducted two years ago, not really an assessment of the impact that intervention had on the livelihood of the beneficiaries/farmers. Your own questioning "which outcome of interest will be appropriate (yield, income, total expenditure, school expenditure, health expenditure, calorie intake, subjective wellbeing....)?" supports the point I am making. 

Please note that "yield" in itself is not an indicator of livelihood improvement, although it is an important outcome that is needed to achieve livelihood improvement under some conditions. A farmer can have a good harvest through the use of a high yielding variety, but if much of that output is lost after harvest, or does not find a market outlet, it may not lead to any improvement in the livelihood of the farmer. 

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                    

[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] The last day for sending messages to the conference is 1 June. The searchable message archive is at https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?A0=Impact-L ].

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the Impact-L list, click the following link:
https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=Impact-L&A=1

ATOM RSS1 RSS2