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Evaluation : Evaluation Overview
Cambodia / © Robert Churchill
Evaluation Overview
Worldwide, major research investment decisions continue to be made with little understanding of the likely opportunity costs of those decisions. Moreover, research resources, and economic development funds in general, are scarce. Consequently, investing large sums in developing drought tolerant maize varieties, for example, implies less or little funding to pursue research designed to develop new cassava varieties or management practices that ameliorate the yield suppressing effects of cassava mosaic virus. Understanding the prospective agronomic and economic trade-offs implicit in these research priority decisions, and thereby improving decision making processes, is the ultimate objective of HarvestChoice.
Benin / © Richard Waghorn
Plausible agronomic and economic assessments of the likely effects of new agricultural technologies, farm input use and management practices, and improvements to rural infrastructure and market access at the spatial scales required for policy and investment choices is key to better calibrating these research and related investment choices. Calibrating these assessments in ways that recognize the site-specificity of potential agricultural technologies, input and market interventions not only improves the accuracy of the assessments it also improves the targeting of the interventions to those locales deemed likely to realize the most desired outcomes.
This Evaluation section contains compilations of two kinds of case studies:
- Scoping Studies and reports provide initial assessments or exploratory studies that support agricultural investment and development decisions. Typically these assessments are more limited in scope and provide preliminary, but nonetheless, potentially useful information and results.
- Investment and Policy Studies provide more comprehensive and more complete assessments. They often involve scaling up and scaling out the evidence developed in a scoping exercise.
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