Addis Goalpurposeobjectives

Sustainable intensification of crop-livestock systems to improve food security and farm income diversification in the Ethiopian highlands Project Design Workshop 30 January - 2 February 2012, Addis Ababa Ethiopia

Group work: purpose and objectives

This workshop provides an opportunity for a broad group of important stakeholders to both learn about the project plans and to share their views on expectations from and opportunities for synergies with the project (days 1 and 2) and for the core project team to finalize the project details (days 3 and 4).

Presentation by Max Rothschild: File:addis_goal-purpose.ppt

Overall big goal (aspirational):

100% increase in overall system productivity in target areas
Reduce farmers' risks from seasonal production variability by 50%
75% reduction in harvest losses and post-harvest losses
50% value addition to theharvest
Lift X thousand people out of poverty
Eliminate the hungry season in target populations

The figures were debated within the group

Assumptions:

Governments of countries involved invest in capacity building and relevant infrastructure to bring researrch outputs to end users
CGIAR and NARS partners deliver project outputs

Project purpose: Provide sustainable pathways out of hunger and poverty for rural populations, particularly for women and childrne, through sufficiently improved food, nutrition, and income security and conservation and enhancement of the natural resource base.

Project objectives:

Identify, combine, adapt and evaluate sustainable intensification farming options
Effectively deliver and help scale out research outputs to end users

Project outcomes

Sustainable increase of whole farm productivity
Sufficiently improved on- and off-farm natural resource management (we argued about this)
Increased nutritional and economic levels of the target populations, especially women and children
Reduced vulnerability and increased resilience of all members of the target population and of the farming systems to adverse environmental and economic challenges.

Comments: About the big goal:

Figures are too high! (3 participants)
What about the target area?
System productivity is in the big goal but other figures and statements are more about the crop side.
It would be useful to have an ex-ante assessment and get to more realistic figures once we know about the technologies used etc.
There is an analytical framework that we can put against that and it should tell us where we can be;
Answer from Max: These are aspirational.
Conclusion: a group will have to work on this further.

About the project purpose:

Can we put indicators to this? It will be expected.
The notion of intensification should be featured in the purpose too.

About the project objectives:

This is about combining certain components, not overall options;
We need to combine the 2 points rather than follow them sequentially;
'Farming options' is good but we also need to consider options outside farming;
Let's indicate 'participation and co-evaluation with farmers and other stakeholders;
The term 'farming options' was chosen over technological options because farmers do not use the term 'technology'.

About project outcomes:

'Reducing vulnerability' is better than 'resilience' because the former preempts the latter (prevention rather than fixing);
Is this technology used in USAid? What about outputs, outcomes, impact...