Participatory Evaluation of our 2008 - Action Against Hunger

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17. ACF FFS programme planning should include greater engagement with the sub-county level FFS network for increased linkages and experience sharing. Even if network level processing equipment is unrealistic in practice, the FFS network could still offer tangible benefits such as networking related to complementary activities, marketing opportunities, new ideas, etc. FAO will continue to encourage FFS networks, so engagement can only be to group advantage. Otherwise, some groups may feel marginalised from the network and some activities, as reported in Minakulu. 18. Cassava multiplication and transfer should be included in future FFS activities and curricula as a complementary initiative that increases food access and availability. The FFS group can be used as a locus for cassava distribution and practices, further strengthening the group as a local source of innovative practices and varieties. This would also create an additional opportunity for non-FFS participants to see what the groups are doing and learn from their experience, ultimately benefiting from increased access to disease resistant cassava. ACF first should confirm which variety is most appropriate. The 2008 programme promoted akena, which reportedly has been replaced by MH97 as the recommended choice for its greater resistance. This should be verified. 19. Goat restocking should continue to be included in future FFS design, including neighbours not participating directly in the programme. Animals are key financial assets and any opportunity to diversify income and food sources will benefit households over time. Including neighbours could help reduce resentment about not receiving other programme inputs while at the same time spreading benefits more widely (either receiving their own animal at the same time as participants or receiving the first kid). Planning should ensure inclusion of activities and costs associated with animal treatment, not only procurement and distribution. 20. Future FFS programming should explore how income generating opportunities could be increased without distracting from core activities. The emphasis here is with increasing income opportunities. Stand alone IGA initiatives like those facilitated in other ACF Uganda programmes could prove too demanding in terms of participant time and could distract from the programmatic focus of FFSs. Nonetheless, at individual and group level there are possibilities to increase income sources and levels. Possibilities include processing, value addition, direct market linkages, product bulking and sale, etc. All such activities could be linked with the commercial and study plot production, ideally extended to household level for particularly active participants. 21. Future ACF monitoring and surveillance should explore the correlation of high market prices, months with inadequate household food provisioning, feeding centre admissions, and possibly even groundwater levels. 1 The seasonality of programming should also be considered alongside the seasonality of household shocks and stresses. Identifying and understanding such linkages might lead to programmatic approaches to prevent or minimise their effect on household food security and livelihoods. Greater seasonal analysis can also guide the timing of activities and inputs. This type of cross-referencing would also strengthen departmental integration, or at least coordination, while increasing the relevance of ACF monitoring and surveillance. Complementarity of methods within the FSL unit might also be improved in the process, such as how approaches to farmer experimentation and cash transfers might overlap and when they should be done. 22. Alternatives to depending on FAO procurement are required to ensure seasonally appropriate timing of inputs and related activities. Rather than depending on FAO procurement and release of in-kind programme inputs, other farmer groups such as those in the FFS network or those working with other NGOs in the North could be viable sources of seed, livestock, or cassava cuttings. Victoria Seeds could also be a source of seeds, offering ACF FFS participants the additional income opportunity of direct access to commercial 1 Anticipating this discussion, the evaluator sought nutrition programme enrolment data for the 2007-2008 period so that the annual trend could be compared with others like market prices and MIHFP. Price data ultimately were incomplete and could not be used. Action Against Hunger Uganda - 10 - Farmer Field School Evaluation
purchasing of their harvest. Another possibility would be to increase the cash component paid to groups so that they can be empowered to organise their own purchase of programme inputs. This approach would align with that already underway in an ACF direct cash transfer programme in Lira, wherein groups and individuals are backstopped in managing their own enterprise planning, savings, and expenditure. 23. ACF should formally request FAO to fulfil its pending 2008 commitments to provide a plough to each group and a goat to every participant. These were important shortcomings of the 2008 programme that diminished ACF’s legitimacy in participants’ eyes as an effective implementing agency and weakened potential programmatic impact on household production, food sources, income sources, and resilience. 24. Donors supporting household food security and livelihoods through production should ensure that cash and kind inputs are available early enough in the calendar year to ensure NGO programming can capitalise on first season. In practice, due to funding, most activities did not start until late February and March. Although this still enabled ACF to work with participants from early in their production cycle, an earlier start to activities would allow more effective FFS engagement by beginning before land preparation commences. This approach would increase the benefits of working through an entire production cycle. In-kind contributions to support production have seasonal constraints that determine periods for delivery, training, preparation, etc. 25. Future FAO data collection of NGO farmer field school programmes for both monitoring and evaluation should be shared routinely with each agency to support their own internal monitoring. Most of the time and energy invested by ACF in FFS monitoring was for the crop data required by FAO. Data were collected and entered by ACF staff then forwarded to FAO in Kampala without internal summary or analysis. Nor were there any summary or analysis fed back from FAO. ACF (and presumably other agencies) would benefit from better access and use of this same information as a complement to its internal M&E. The process within FAO of institutionalising this approach would strengthen their own M&E capacity in the process, and give further value to the financial and technical support they offer. Action Against Hunger Uganda - 11 - Farmer Field School Evaluation
Page 1 and 2: Participatory Evaluation of the 200
Page 3 and 4: Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.........
Page 5 and 6: Executive Summary A. Synthesis This
Page 7 and 8: 24. FAO cannot be relied upon for s
Page 9: 10. FFS group meeting locations cou
Page 13 and 14: 1. Background 1.1 ACF and the Lango
Page 15 and 16: Figure 3. Summary of FFS groups, en
Page 17 and 18: new data collected and instead to t
Page 19 and 20: In the absence of a logframe for th
Page 21 and 22: of participants could be the ones a
Page 23 and 24: Figure 7. Comparison of actual and
Page 25 and 26: Figure 8. Planting practices of pro
Page 27 and 28: group members. Such benefits may ac
Page 29 and 30: indications of positive FFS perform
Page 31 and 32: Figure 11. Amount remaining in grou
Page 33 and 34: might simply reflect the effect of
Page 35 and 36: Although these additional household
Page 37 and 38: 4.6 Improvement in participant copi
Page 39 and 40: they report that 97 percent of resp
Page 41 and 42: facilitators on improved production
Page 43 and 44: groups in the area, about which man
Page 45 and 46: Appendix A. Seasonal and programmat
Page 47 and 48: Appendix C. Matrix Scoring Experime
Page 49 and 50: Appendix E. Evaluation Methodology
Page 51 and 52: Institutional • FFS shorten the t
Page 53 and 54: Appendix G. Field Tools Farmer Fiel
Page 55 and 56: 6. Enhanced income generation and m
Page 57 and 58: Coping Strategies Location: _______

Participatory Evaluation of our 2008 - Action Against Hunger

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