WEBINAR: Evidence generation in challenging times: Lessons from agricultural innovations

10 December 2020. 

Evidence generation in challenging times: Lessons from agricultural innovations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced course corrections for midstream impact evaluations across the globe. This Evidence Dialogues webinar discussed lessons learned using examples from impact evaluations of agricultural innovations. 

This research program started in 2013. It collaborated with AGRA and IFAD.

• Chair: Sebastian Martinez, Director of Evaluation, 3ie
• Mark Engelbert
• Annemie Maertens, Senior Lecturer, University of Sussex;
• Fred Dzanku, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research (ISSER);
• Alan de Brauw, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI

Background:

Despite the availability of agricultural technologies, few smallholder farmers in developing economiesadopt new inputs and practices. One of the factors preventing this is the lack of effective knowledge dissemination. 

Farmers also face different constraints along the value chain, including lack of financial resources and inadequate infrastructures or market inefficiencies, which can restrain farmers’ abilities to increase their productivity and limit their subsequent well-being.

3ie’s agricultural innovation evidence programme supports evaluations aimed at understanding how best to encourage farmers to adopt new inputs and practices.

Since 2012, 3ie has supported 13 rigorous policy-relevant impact evaluations and one formative evaluation of programmes that enhance agrarian livelihoods. We fund evaluations of interventions that encourage farmers to adopt new technologies, contribute to environmental sustainability, improve their socioeconomic well-being and increase their agricultural production. This evidence programme is a multi-stakeholder collaboration of the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

Mapping the evidence on agricultural innovation programmes
As part of the programme, 3ie also produced an evidence gap map to outline the main findings of impact evaluations and systematic reviews referring to agricultural inputs, practices and programmes aimed at improving farmers’ productivity and well-being. It highlights prominent gaps in evidence on cost-effectiveness, measurements of spillover effects and the use of experimental methods.

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