Methodologies for evaluating on-farm conservation projects

Bioversity International; Bellon, M.; Gotor, E.; Caracciolo, F. (2012) Methodologies for evaluating on-farm conservation projects. n. 4 p.

In the last 20 years there has been a growing interest in on-farm conservation of crop diversity. Numerous projects to support on-farm conservation have been implemented worldwide. Projects are needed because maintaining crop diversity on-farm can entail important costs to farmers, who often face strong incentives to abandon this diversity. There has been however very little systematic assessment of the extent to which these projects have actually produced on-farm conservation outcomes in terms of maintaining or increasing crop diversity on-farm (including farmers' knowledge and practices that underpin this diversity) as well as of livelihood outcomes that create benefits for farmers. . In this brief, the authors propose a methodology to assess the success of on-farm conservation projects and evaluating their effectiveness in terms of livelihood benefits , based on the results of a McKnight Foundation-funded project – ‘Assessing the Success of On-Farm Conservation Projects in Delivering Conservation and Livelihood Outcomes: Identifying Best Practices and Decision Support Tools’. The project was coordinated and implemented by Bioversity International and carried out between March 2010 and May 2012 in the High Andes of Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.