People-centred M&E: Aligning incentives so agriculture does more to reduce hunger
ALINe has commissioned a set of papers and commentaries, reflecting on the current status and role of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) within the agricultural research and development system, and proposing how it can be strengthened and ultimately transformed to improve the impact of agricultural development interventions on people’s lives. The papers appear in an edition of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Bulletin, IDS' flagship publication for development academics, policymakers and practitioners, which has covered major themes and influenced debates within international development for over 40 years.
Given the important role agriculture has to play in alleviating poverty, reducing hunger and undernutrition, ALINe believes that M&E is required to establish and test the efficacy of the assumptions underpinning agricultural interventions, and that people-centred M&E - systematically getting feedback from farmers about their priorities, and what is and is not working during the implementation of projects - is vital for sustainable and equitable improvements in agricultural productivity. ALINe’s edition of the IDS Bulletin proposes different ways of thinking, which build more performance management and aligned incentives into organisations, helps organisations collect valuable data to help them learn through dialogue with smallholder farmers, and where results and value for money and rigorous assessment by recipients can drive improved performance through continuous evolution and refinement.
The Bulletin is available to buy on the Wiley-Blackwell website and details on the papers are below.
Overview: Getting a More Balanced View of What is Working in Agriculture to Reduce Hunger
Yvonne Pinto
The Sorry State of M&E in Agriculture: Can People-centred Approaches Help?
Lawrence Haddad, Johanna Lindstrom and Yvonne Pinto
Commentary on 'The Sorry State of M&E in Agriculture: Can People-centred Approaches Help?'
Zenda Ofir
Evaluation: Why, for Whom and How?
Henry Lucas and Richard Longhurst
Three Approaches to Monitoring: Feedback Systems, Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation and Logical Frameworks
Alex Jacobs, Chris Barnett and Richard Ponsford
A Revolution Whose Time Has Come? The Win-Win of Quantitative Participatory Approaches and Methods
Robert Chambers
Creating the Missing Feedback Loop
Alex Jacobs
Private Sector Metrics Contributions to Social Change: Customer Satisfaction Meets Agriculture Development
David Bonbright and Jamey Power
Commentary on ‘Private Sector Metrics Contributions to Social Change: Customer Satisfaction Meets Agriculture Development'
Edward Mabaya
Monitoring and Evaluating Agricultural Science and Technology Projects: Theories, Practices and Problems
Erik Millstone, Patrick Van Zwanenberg and Fiona Marshall
Incorporating Seasonality into Agricultural Project Design and Learning
Stephen Devereux and Richard Longhurst
Context-specific and Project-induced Risk: Designing Projects for Promoting Resilient Livelihoods
Rachel Sabates-Wheeler, Saul Butters and Martin Greeley
Women's Empowerment, Development Interventions and the Management of Information Flows
Naila Kabeer
A Learning Approach to Monitoring and Evaluation
Katy Oswald and Peter Taylor
Commentary on Latin American Experiences on Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning
Osvaldo Feinstein
Does Research Reduce Poverty? Assessing the Impacts of Policy-oriented Research in Agriculture
Andy Sumner, Edoardo Masset and Rajendra Mulmi
Commentary on 'Does Research Reduce Poverty? Assessing the Impacts of Policyoriented Research in Agriculture'
Raghav Gaiha and Shantanu Mathur
