Publications

Donors are increasingly interested in agricultural growth and economic development. The persistence of poverty in rural areas and the role of agriculture in climate change and food security, has renewed interest in smallholder and family farming for development solutions.

“Nine billion by 2050” is a commonly cited prediction on global population growth that frames arguments about access to natural resources, as well as the future supply of sufficient and nutritious food. Solutions for meeting food needs and for mitigating environmental constraints include: sustainable agricultural practices; innovative technologies to increase productivity and improve food chain efficiency; and, improved market access for farmers. But these solutions tend to be technologically biased, focusing on agricultural and value chain technologies – without enough attention given to gender and social disparities (Beuchelt & Badshue 2013; Pyburn 2014).

The feminization of agriculture is well recognized: women are acknowledged as the main food producers in mainstream development policy and practice. However, women are disproportionally affected by hunger and malnourishment. A growing body of literature focuses
on how to contribute to improved nutrition through agricultural interventions. ‘Women’s empowerment’ is often cited as a promising strategy for improved nutrition.

For agriculture to prosper, farm inputs need to be available, affordable, accessible, and good quality. Seeds, fertilizers, and agro-chemicals, are essential for improving the productivity and incomes of smallholder farmers in developing countries (World Bank, 2007, 2013; Rosegrant et al. ,2001; AGRA 2013; FAO, 2013). As input supply is a critical factor in inclusive agricultural and rural development, many donors support initiatives that improve smallholders’ access to inputs. Some of these programs are successful, others are not.

Agricultural extension has a significant role to play in rural development. Yet, ‘extension’ itself is also developing and so is its role in development. How extension is understood, coordinated, financed and implemented has evolved over time. While agricultural extension used to be almost exclusively publicly funded and implemented in a top-down manner to increase productivity and transfer new technologies to small-scale farmers, since the late 1980s and 1990s the private sector has gradually become engaged in different ways and extension has evolved to being more participatory and holistic, at least in rhetoric.

Evaluation is seen as vital for both accountability and learning purposes. This involves understanding not only what worked but also the process of change and why and how an intervention worked. Donors, programme managers and evaluators often claim to seek not only successful outcomes, but the ‘holy grail’ of impact. This paper surveys the minefield of what impact is and how it can be reliably assessed, from the perspectives of proponents favouring (quasi)experimental, quantitative designs to those oriented towards the qualitative.

Value chain development approaches seldom deliver large scale impact. Based on the examination of five cases where impact at scale was realised, recommendations are offered to increase the chances of value chain interventions contributing to impact at scale.

Bringing a group of diverse but interdependent stakeholders together to build and stimulate the cassava and maize sectors both goes “against the grain” and “to the roots” of agricultural development in West and Central Africa. It requires new thinking and new organizational constellations, alongside an appreciation and inclusion of long-standing actors in these food crop systems. These actors include men and women farmers, primary processors, transporters, traders, researchers, extension workers, policymakers and input suppliers, to name just a few.

Objectives: To compare point-of-care (POC) systems in two different periods: (1) before 2010 when all high-risk patients were offered POC management for urogenital gonorrhoea by Gram stain examination; and (2) after 2010 when only those with symptoms were offered Gram stain examination.