Agriculture

BASELINE STUDY REPORT: AGRO-SOURCE: LAST-MILE AGRICULTURAL INPUT SUPPLY SYSTEMS

The Agro-Source project in Ghana is a two and half (2½) year project (July 2018 to December 2020). The overall goal of the Agro-Source project is to improve the productivity of 30,000 smallholder women farmers in five (5) districts i.e. Garu, Tempane, Bawku West, Lambussie-Karni and Nandom in the Upper East and West regions of Ghana through increased availability, access and use of good quality agricultural inputs by 2020.

The baseline study was to establish a benchmark against which to measure the progress and achievements of the project. It was to generate: information on the current status on the availability of quality agro-inputs in the target locations and information regarding smallholder women farmers’ access to and utilization of agro-inputs to improve their productivity.

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Rapport de la revue interne-Projet de Recherche-Développment pour la Sécurité Alimentaire et l’ Adaptation au Changement Climatique

L’objectif stratégique du projet REDSAACC vise à appuyer les efforts du gouvernement dans le domaine de la sécurité alimentaire et nutritionnelle en contribuant à mettre les populations Nigériennes à l’abri de la famine et à leur garantir les conditions d’une pleine participation à la production nationale et à l’amélioration de leurs revenus.

L’objectif global de cette revue interne est de montrer et mesurer les changements opérés du fait des actions du projet REDSAACC à travers l’évaluation des effets/impacts de la mise en œuvre de l’approche du projet dans le transfert des technologies et le partage des innovations locales pour une adaptation des systèmes de production agricole aux changements climatiques. Read More...

Informe Final de Evaluación Proyecto Nutriendo el Futuro Fase II

El Proyecto Nutriendo el Futuro Fase II se ejecutó en el marco de la alianza CARE y Cargill, en apoyo a cuatro países del área centroamericana: Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua y Costa Rica.
Su objetivo fue contribuir a que los productores/as y microempresarios/as de las áreas rurales y periurbanas del área de influencia de Cargill mejoraran la calidad de vida de sus familias, garantizando su seguridad alimentaria y el manejo sostenible de sus recursos naturales. El mismo se implementó por un período de 36 meses, entre septiembre de 2016 y agosto de 2019. El Proyecto brindó apoyo directo a un total de 84 comunidades, 1,606 pequeños productores/as, 968 microempresarios/as y 25,968 niños y niñas en edad escolar. Más del 50% de los beneficiarios (12,863) fueron mujeres y niñas. Read More...

5 Game Changing Initiatives for Transformative Agricultural Extension

The USAID Agricultural Extension Support Activity (AESA) project is a key part of Bangladesh-centered Feed the Future (FtF) initiative addresses this challenge. Implemented by the Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM) with technical partners CARE Bangladesh and mPower Social Enterprises Ltd., the goal of the project which started at late 2012 is to strengthen the existing extension system in southwest and central Bangladesh to sustainably improve food security and nutrition for smallholder farmers. This translates to the enhancement of access to and utilization of agricultural extension services by smallholder farmers – both women and men. Key interventions under this project works to build capacities and creating support to a demand-driven extension system, synergized by the use of ICT. Geographically distributed in the central and southwest Bangladesh, the project operates in 12 districts, covering 26 upazilas, under Jessore, Khulna and Barisal regions as primary intervention areas.

This report identifies 5 game changing initiatives for transformative agricultural extension. Read More...

Gender Equity and Women’s Empowerment: The Journey So far; The Experience of the ENSURE Program

The ENSURE Food Security Program is a USAID-funded, five-year intervention designed to profoundly and sustainably impact 215,000 vulnerable and food- insecure Zimbabweans in Manicaland and Masvingo Provinces. The program is a shared commitment by four partners and one service provider—World Vision, CARE, SNV, SAFIRE and ICRISAT—who work together to mainstream gender equity and natural resource management in the three key areas of maternal and child nutrition and health, agricultural production and marketing, and community resilience.

The success of ENSURE can be portrayed through the accounts of thousands of women and men whose lives have been changed through its various programme interventions. Tangible gender transformative changes can be noticed on several dimensions: joint household decision making; reduced violence against women; increased women’s leadership in community leadership; men assisting women with household chores and childcare; women’s ownership of high value productive assets; and increased access and control over income.
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Evaluation Finale “Dans les Zones de Feed the Future” du Projet USAID/Nutrition et Hygiène/ CARE dans la Région de Mopti – Mali

L’objectif de cette évaluation finale est d’apprécier le niveau d’évolution des indicateurs du Projet entre l’étude de base et étude finale. De façon spécifique il s’agit d'évaluer les niveaux actuels des indicateurs agricultures, les indicateurs Santé/Nutrition/WASH d’une part, et d’autre part, de mesurer l’impact des émissions radiophoniques sur les communautés bénéficiaires.

De façon globale des résultats forts encourageants sont notés, car la plupart des indicateurs ont
connu des améliorations par rapport à leur valeur de base en 2016. La synthèse de ces résultats
est présentée ci-après. Read More...

Village Savings and Loan Associations as Economic Drivers

Exploring impacts of Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) at micro level to understand their potential to contribute to the Tanzanian economy

Savings-led microfinance innovation aims to improve access to financial services in remote areas, especially among women. CARE International has been the leading innovator in the field and has initiated Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) programmes across Tanzania. CARE aims to increase members in Tanzania to 8 million by 2025 with the vison to help improve the national economy. CARE thus commissioned SFTZ to carry out a study that investigates the potential of VSLA contributions to local and national economies.

METHODS. The study was implemented in six villages in Mufindi district, Iringa region; four of which were assigned as treatment and two as control. Treatment villages had 9 to 15 NGO-facilitated VSLAs, and control villages had only two comparable VSLAs.

RESULTS. Analysis of the data at the village level did not provide evidence that VSLA initiatives have contributed to large-scale economic growth except for one risk mitigation sub-indicator. A number of issues hindered the village-level comparison: First, microfinance savings groups were also present in control villages. Secondly, the penetration of savings groups within all treatment villages was low (below 30%, except for one village).

However, at the household level, VSLA membership showed significant impacts on a number of micro-level measures of economic growth. VSLA households had higher household savings, drew on VSLA savings to overcome negative impacts of household shocks, attained greater food security and more diverse diets, achieved better agricultural and business outcomes, and enjoyed greater economic status. Although these differences cannot be directly attributed to the VSLA programme without before-and-after comparisons with a meaningful control group, the positive household impacts suggest that a VSLA programme scaled to a high density within each village could have a positive impact
on the local economy. Read More...

Mid-Term Strategic Review of the Livelihoods for Resilience Activity

CARE commissioned a Mid-Term Strategic Review (MTSR) of the Livelihoods for Resilience Activity to formulate recommendations for the remaining life of the project to increase effectiveness in achieving sustainable impact. The Livelihoods for Resilience Activity is being implemented in 27 Woredas in the three regions of Tigray, Amhara, and Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples and is just over the midway point in its five-year life from December 5, 2016, through December 3, 2021. The purpose of the Livelihoods for Resilience Activity is to reduce food insecurity and increase resilience for 97,900 chronically food insecure households that are enrolled in the fourth cycle of the Government of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP4), enabling them to graduate with resilience from the PSNP4.

The MTSR for the Livelihoods for Resilience Activity was a formative evaluation exercise intended to provide guidance on ways to improve the effectiveness of the program in achieving intended impact.

Relative to the four global learning questions for the MTSR (see page 4), the MTSR found that the model that the Livelihoods for Resilience Activity is implementing is effective for achieving graduation with resilience, but because frontline delivery is constrained by the number of staff, their technical capacities and the degree of supervision and support that they receive, interventions are not always going deeply enough to ensure behavioral change. The program is empowering women both economically and socially through the VESA platform, but there are significant variations between regions; and outside of the VESA, there is some evidence to suggest that women’s empowerment has not yet been well incorporated, especially in value chain participation and MFI linkages. Progress is certainly being made in transferring ideas and knowledge to PSNP counterparts, but that has not yet translated into practice mainly because of resource constraints. Key approaches that need to be added or strengthened in the coming two years include expanding frontline delivery capacities, expanding efforts to ensure that strategies and approaches are well understood by implementation staff at all levels in all partners, ensuring that women’s empowerment is included in all approaches by all partners, and looking for new ways to facilitate access to jobs, either through self-employment or wage employment, for youth from PSNP households.

The Livelihoods for Resilience Activity is already doing some very nice work in starting to achieve sustainable impact. The project has strong potential to be recognized as a “great” project if it can make some adjustments.
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Projet d’appui à la filière halieutique (PAFHa) au Mali

Projet d’appui à la filière halieutique (PAFHa) in Mali is a project that aims to reduce food and nutrition insecurity in Mali by improving incomes through the development of the fishing industry.
PAFHa's goals include:
-Improved Conservation, enhancement and marketing of fish products
-Developed fish production (fishing/fish farming) through sustainable practices
- Strengthened government technical services and professional organisations are involved in the program and their capacities Read More...

Pathways Project End of Project Evaluation Report

Pathways aimed to increase productivity and income in equitable agriculture systems. CARE innovated an effective Theory of Change to address real issues affecting rural women farmers by providing them with capacities in agriculture; access to inputs, extension services and markets; empowerment to influence decisions; and an enabling environment for growth.

Pathways has met and, in most cases, surpassed targets set in its M&E framework. In the words of women themselves the project has worked very well, focusing on groundnuts and soybean as high-value cash crop substitutes for tobacco because of their high potential for markets, ability to replenish the lost soil fertility and strong nutritional value. It has grown from working with 9,000 to 14,282 farmers (hosting a population of 71,410 people), organising them into 1,528 groups. Women provide leadership to most of the groups after being transformed to become successful wives, farmers and entrepreneurs who can make independent decisions and speak in public.

In 2015 alone, collective sale revenues from groundnuts and soy amounted to MK128, 601,938 (US$233,821.7) and rose to MK854, 356,267 (US$751,511) by the end of 2017. Contract farming organized by the project contributed US$34,233 to these revenues. In 2014, the project conducted 188 community-wide gender dialogue sessions and reached out to 9,654 people, 7193 female and 2464 male, helping them to internalize and address gender inequalities. Men have generally started looking at women as partners in agriculture and development that is cementing marriage bonds and creating an enabling environment for women to succeed. Along with this, CARE Malawi linked women farmers to key players in the groundnut and soy value chains to help them excel.

As a consequence, by December 2016 a total of 246 farmer groups had accounts with OIBM and other banks through which they saved MK49, 175,577 and 6 VSLs accessed two group loans worth MK4,800,000 (US$7,804.88) which they invested in agriculture, business and VSL activities. VSLs profited and shared out US$871,178 in the year, with more benefits seen in 2017 when savings accumulated to US$3,756,435 e.g. earnings of MK47, 489.32 to MK204, 769.33 per household on average. In turn, per capita household monthly incomes and expenditures doubled by the time the project closed in December 2018. Although agricultural productivity continued to decline over the project life due to poor weather conditions, Pathways farmers remained food secure and continued to eat at least two meals a day. Household dietary diversity (HDDS) and women intra-household food access (AHA) data from this evaluation found levels of consumption to be acceptable and typical of food secure households. These results showcase that Pathways beneficiaries have grown their incomes, assets and food availability in the face of the changing climate and are better off even in difficult years. Read More...

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