Lesson Learned

Test traditional assumptions. The evaluation findings suggest that starter kits may not have served as an incentive for adopting fertilizer application and the use of improved seeds as expected.

Test traditional assumptions. The evaluation findings suggest that starter kits may not have served as an incentive for adopting fertilizer application and the use of improved seeds as expected. In addition, it appears that aggressive training targets might have impacted content and quality of training, including lack of customized training and starter kits to regions and priority value chains per region. The findings suggest the need to weigh carefully the costs/benefits of large scale, limited-duration training versus more focused, longer-duration training. The original assumptions of the program logic did not question the content or duration of training, or the content of technical support to program participants, so these basic questions were not built into the evaluation design. This has limited MCC’s ability to understand more about what did and didn’t work and why in a rigorous way. In the future, MCC and MCAs will look for opportunities to use impact evaluations to test traditional assumptions about what works and specifically will look for opportunities to use impact evaluations to test starter kit contents, delivery method and timing, and assess how they affect farming incentives and behaviors.