An approach for assessing whether agricultural projects help smallholders transition to better livelihood strategies: A malawian case study

IF 6.8 1区经济学 Q1 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS & POLICY

Food Policy Pub Date : 2024-09-22 DOI:10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102728

Anne G. Timu , Peter Hazell , Sara Savastano

{"title":"An approach for assessing whether agricultural projects help smallholders transition to better livelihood strategies: A malawian case study","authors":"Anne G. Timu , Peter Hazell , Sara Savastano","doi":"10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102728","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Agricultural projects typically aim to promote the uptake of project components amongst targeted small farm populations to improve their farm productivity and welfare. While this approach can be an important first step towards improving smallholder livelihoods, it ignores alternative and often superior livelihood options that might arise within the rural transformation process, particularly in commercial agriculture and the rural nonfarm economy. We argue that the design of smallholder projects implemented within regions already undergoing a dynamic transformation and/or projects which have significant value chain components, should be broadened to assist smallholders in making successful transitions to their best livelihood options. For such projects, monitoring and evaluation activities should track livelihood transitions as well as the usual assessments of productivity and welfare outcomes. To help operationalize such an approach, we propose a typology of smallholder livelihood strategies that can track transitions over time and illustrate its use with data from the Sustainable Agricultural Production Program (SAPP), an agricultural value chain project in Malawi. Using available household panel data and quasi-experimental econometric approaches, we find that the project helped smallholders transition out of subsistence farming to market-oriented farming and helped already existing market-oriented farmers remain as such. Even though the project did not have any specific components designed to promote off-farm incomes, nevertheless, it facilitated many farm household transitions to off-farm diversified livelihoods, possibly due to spillover benefits generated within the local nonfarm economy. All SAPP facilitated transitions led to increases in household incomes. We conclude with some lessons for designing, monitoring, and the evaluation of future agricultural projects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":321,"journal":{"name":"Food Policy","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 102728"},"PeriodicalIF":6.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919224001398/pdfft?md5=47f2a911b2e2b1dd1b7aa98e77ec3db1&pid=1-s2.0-S0306919224001398-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Food Policy","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919224001398","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS & POLICY","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Agricultural projects typically aim to promote the uptake of project components amongst targeted small farm populations to improve their farm productivity and welfare. While this approach can be an important first step towards improving smallholder livelihoods, it ignores alternative and often superior livelihood options that might arise within the rural transformation process, particularly in commercial agriculture and the rural nonfarm economy. We argue that the design of smallholder projects implemented within regions already undergoing a dynamic transformation and/or projects which have significant value chain components, should be broadened to assist smallholders in making successful transitions to their best livelihood options. For such projects, monitoring and evaluation activities should track livelihood transitions as well as the usual assessments of productivity and welfare outcomes. To help operationalize such an approach, we propose a typology of smallholder livelihood strategies that can track transitions over time and illustrate its use with data from the Sustainable Agricultural Production Program (SAPP), an agricultural value chain project in Malawi. Using available household panel data and quasi-experimental econometric approaches, we find that the project helped smallholders transition out of subsistence farming to market-oriented farming and helped already existing market-oriented farmers remain as such. Even though the project did not have any specific components designed to promote off-farm incomes, nevertheless, it facilitated many farm household transitions to off-farm diversified livelihoods, possibly due to spillover benefits generated within the local nonfarm economy. All SAPP facilitated transitions led to increases in household incomes. We conclude with some lessons for designing, monitoring, and the evaluation of future agricultural projects.

查看原文本刊更多论文

评估农业项目是否有助于小农向更好的生计战略过渡的方法：马拉维案例研究

农业项目通常旨在促进目标小农采纳项目内容，以提高其农业生产率和福利。虽然这种方法可以成为改善小农生计的重要第一步，但它忽视了农村转型过程中可能出现的其他生计选择，尤其是商业农业和农村非农经济中的其他生计选择，而这些选择往往更为优越。我们认为，在已经经历动态转型的地区实施的小农项目和/或具有重要价值链组成部分的项目，其设计应予以扩大，以帮助小农成功过渡到最佳生计选择。对于此类项目，监测和评估活动应跟踪生计转型情况，并对生产率和福利成果进行常规评估。为了帮助将这种方法付诸实施，我们提出了一种小农生计战略类型学，这种类型学可以跟踪随着时间推移而发生的转变，并利用马拉维的一个农业价值链项目--可持续农业生产计划（SAPP）的数据来说明这种类型学的使用。利用现有的家庭面板数据和准实验计量经济学方法，我们发现该项目帮助小农户从自给农作过渡到以市场为导向的农作，并帮助现有的以市场为导向的农户继续保持自给农作。尽管该项目没有任何旨在促进非农收入的具体内容，但它还是促进了许多农户向非农多样化生计过渡，这可能是由于当地非农经济产生的溢出效益。所有 SAPP 促进的转型都增加了家庭收入。最后，我们为未来农业项目的设计、监测和评估提供了一些经验。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Food Policy 管理科学-农业经济与政策

CiteScore

11.40

自引率

4.60%

发文量

128

审稿时长

62 days

期刊介绍： Food Policy is a multidisciplinary journal publishing original research and novel evidence on issues in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of policies for the food sector in developing, transition, and advanced economies. Our main focus is on the economic and social aspect of food policy, and we prioritize empirical studies informing international food policy debates. Provided that articles make a clear and explicit contribution to food policy debates of international interest, we consider papers from any of the social sciences. Papers from other disciplines (e.g., law) will be considered only if they provide a key policy contribution, and are written in a style which is accessible to a social science readership.