Impact Assessment and Project Development: An Overview

This paper provides a background for the reports produced on a nine-month training and application program designed to encourage the institutionalization of broad-scoped project impact evaluation skills and strategies. The training has been through the initiative of the micro component of the Economic and Social Impact Analysis/Women in Development (ESIA/WID) and the Food Systems Program of the East-West Center Resource Systems Institute (RSI). It reviews the micro component of the ESIA/WID that provides the context for other articles in this journal, the significance of the efforts in the reports and the relationship of the training program to the micro component.impact analysis

Impact Assessment and Project Development: An Overview

This paper provides a background for the reports produced on a nine-month training and application program designed to encourage the institutionalization of broad-scoped project impact evaluation skills and strategies. The training has been through the initiative of the micro component of the Economic and Social Impact Analysis/Women in Development (ESIA/WID) and the Food Systems Program of the East-West Center Resource Systems Institute (RSI). It reviews the micro component of the ESIA/WID that provides the context for other articles in this journal, the significance of the efforts in the reports and the relationship of the training program to the micro component.impact analysis

Old Images and New Challenges: Rethinking the Mission of Agricultural Support Systems in Asia

To speak of rethinking the mission of the agricultural support system is no easy task. It has already played crucial roles in Asia’s recent agricultural development. This paper is designed to determine the challenges to sustainable development and what poverty alleviation might mean for the mission of agricultural research and extension. It focuses on limited-resource farmers and on the crucial distinction between agricultural support as a transfer and as a transformational process.research and development sector, agriculture sector, research, farm lands, extension services, sustainable development

Old Images and New Challenges: Rethinking the Mission of Agricultural Support Systems in Asia

To speak of rethinking the mission of the agricultural support system is no easy task. It has already played crucial roles in Asia’s recent agricultural development. This paper is designed to determine the challenges to sustainable development and what poverty alleviation might mean for the mission of agricultural research and extension. It focuses on limited-resource farmers and on the crucial distinction between agricultural support as a transfer and as a transformational process.research and development sector, agriculture sector, research, farm lands, extension services, sustainable development

The Need to Know: Monitoring and Evaluating Agricultural Technology Management

This paper presents an operational framework that agricultural support system management can use to determine what it needs to know about its clients (farmers, agribusiness, commodity groups, other government agencies, urban consumers, and inter­national "experts''), how it can find out what it needs to know, and how it can use the information generated to improve priori­ties, personnel management, and resource allocation. The frame­work used is called program benefit monitoring and evaluation (PBME). The framework is highly management-oriented, which means it is oriented to the decisions that agricultural technology management needs to make. It begins with simple "self-assess­ment" methods that help management answer questions such as, What is the mission? What are the capacities? What are the constraints and opportunities in the client environment? What does management need to know (and when) to best mobilize available capacity, overcome (or avoid) constraints, and meet its mission? The self-assessment methods, in turn, are linked to specific monitoring methods with primary attention to capabili­ties and resources that are already available. This permits man­agement to determine the most efficient and reliable way to meet its information needs