From 5 May to 1 June 2014, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hosted a moderated e-mail conference on "Approaches and methodologies in ex post impact assessment of agricultural research: Experiences, lessons learned and perspectives". It was organized by FAO as part of its contributions to an EU-FP7 project called IMPRESA that is looking at the impacts of agricultural research in Europe.

 

The Moderator's Summary of the FAO e-mail conference on approaches and methodologies in ex post impact assessment of agricultural research (epIA-AR) has just been published. Over 600 people subscribed to this 4-week long conference, posting 109 messages which came from 38 different countries.

 

During the conference, contributors strongly supported participation of key stakeholders and beneficiaries in epIA-AR processes and they underlined the importance of getting relevant and reliable data for epIA-AR. While some differences in opinion were expressed regarding the relative merits of using quantitative versus qualitative methods for epIA-AR, there was general agreement about the mutual benefits to be gained from using both.

 

The challenges of attributing changes that occur within complex and dynamic agricultural systems to specific research-derived interventions were underlined by several participants. While the main focus of the e-mail conference was on 'how' to do epIA-AR, there was also ample discussion regarding why and when it should be done and what kind of impacts should be assessed.

 

To find out more about the main discussion points and conclusions, see the 14-page summary (130 KB).

 

Photo credit: ©FAO/Paballo Thekiso