What is it about?

We explore the early impacts (after two years if implementation) of a development project that promoted conservation agriculture practices, informal sending and lending groups and metallic silos for storage. The project promoted these interventions by forming farmers's groups. Groups determined priorities within the project scope. We find that this strategy resulted in increases in adoption rates of conservation practices, increases in savings, and reductions in post harvest loses. We also find differences in project impacts as measure by households wealth.

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Why is it important?

An important general recommendation from this study is that the expectation of impact from each project intervention be tailored to the likely time lapse before participants can experience benefits. Development projects promoting a package of divisible technologies may want to set poverty relief objectives that explicitly incorporate the timing of expected benefits from adoption of specific practices. In an environment of donor impatience to see rapid impacts, such an approach would calibrate donor expectations to a realistic sequence of intermediate impacts that culminate in long-term desired outcomes.

Perspectives

I enjoyed the work involved in this project, the design of the impact study, conducting fieldwork in Nicaragua, the focus country of this research, working together with project partners, and interacting with farmers. This research gave me the opportunity to apply different econometric impact assessment techniques. As a result of this research, project implementation by CRS is taking into consideration our recommendations for other projects.

Alexandra Peralta
University of Adelaide

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: The Secret to Getting Ahead Is Getting Started: Early Impacts of a Rural Development Project, Sustainability, July 2018, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/su10082644.
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