As requested my contribution to the discussion is re-posted below:
Before I get into some of my pet concerns on evaluations please allow me a couple comments on Binod Chapagain remarks. His comment concerning the evaluations being too late in a project’s life to effectively adjust the approach, emphasis one of my frequent comments. That is the biggest contribution of evaluations are how they impact future projects design to better serve the intended beneficiaries. Along with this concern is how difficult it is to adjust ongoing projects. Please note that most major projects, particularly those with external funding and expatriate advisors, have lead times of more than two years and preparation costs exceeding one million dollars, before the advisory team can be contracted, fielded, and finally have detailed interaction with the beneficiaries to determine what their real needs might be. With that much time and effort committed, no one wants to finally learn the project was not fully welcomed by the community it was intended to serve. Also, by the time the implementing team is on the ground, most of the fundamental as to what type of innovation is going to be undertaken with staff, particularly expatriate staff, recruited committed to these innovations. This again limits any major adjustments to project programs. Perhaps a little tweaking the approach but no major adjustments. Again, the evaluations are most effective in guiding future projects.
Also, Binod mentioned that most evaluations were designed to document compliance with original documents as to what was to be accomplished. These evaluations by their very nature usually mostly internal and aimed at appeasing the donors and thus illustrate the project appears successful. This is necessary to ensure project extensions and future projects for the contractor. Thus, the evaluation report needs to be taken with a measure of skepticism for which a few simple computations or analysis could quickly show the flaws. They often rely on the recipient of evaluation reports being too tied up with project management or designing future projects to give the evaluation as reported the scrutiny need to guide future projects, just happy to see what appears as a positive result.
Also, I noticed Tamarie Magaisa mentioned targets for evaluation criteria. This again I fully endorse as necessary to separate successful from unsuccessful projects. Without well established and published targets, stated at the projects conception, projects can easily be proclaimed successful when by most criteria they are total failures. More about this later.
Please now allow me to briefly vent some of my concerns where evaluations have failed to assist smallholder farming communities by overlooking critical criteria or covering up innovations that should have been quickly identified as failure.
The first is the failure to recognize that most of our innovations in farm production are more labor-intensive, when most smallholder farmers are in a severely labor stressed environment. Thus, while our innovations are a good physical fit to the environment, highly desirable for various reasons, they are not operationally feasible over the entire community. The result is with manual operations it takes some 8 weeks for basic crop establishment, rendering most mid-season activities null and void resulting in declining potential yields until smallholder farmers cannot meet their domestic family food security needs. An evaluation could easily address this concern with some simple field observations, plus some simple questions, rather than blaming limited acceptance on poor extension to farmers with limited formal educations. Once the operational limitations are recognized, projects could more effectively concentrate on enhancing the operational capacity of smallholder communities with such solutions as facilitating access to contract mechanization has occurred in paddy producing Asia some 30 years ago with the shift from water buffalo to power tillers.
A major part of this is that most smallholder farmers have sever dietary caloric deficit to undertake a full day of agronomic field work. A full day of agronomic field work requires a diet of more than 4000 kcal/day while they are lucky to have access to 2500 kcal/day which allowing 2000 kcal/day for basic metabolism allows only 500 kcal/day for work energy. That would allow only a couple hours of diligent effort perhaps paced over a couple more with less diligence. No wonder it takes 8 weeks for basic crop establishment. How easy would it have been for an evaluation to identify diet as a major hinderance to crop management? We have known for decades that smallholder farmers were poor, and perhaps hungry, but never related that to crop husbandry. Why?? Will we be able to guide smallholders out of poverty without first addressing this issue? Yet, a recent FAO webinar discussing the degree of malnutrition and under nutrition only allocated light work for smallholders factoring in only 1800 kcal/day.
My other major issue is the overreliance on producer organizations to assist smallholder communities with their marketing. This is where evaluation appeasement reporting has failed to identify how few farmers are participating in the producer organizations and even then, they will side-sell the bulk of their produce to the often vilified private traders. The result is producer organizations attract only about 10% of potential members and a market share of a trivial >5% of the communities’ market production. By all business standards a scandalous failure, but they have remained a proclaimed success and the primary means to assist smallholder communities for over 30 years. How come? What will it take for evaluations to move on to more effective marketing mechanisms?
With that I will place in the reference an article that I prepared for a symposium here at Colorado State University a little while ago reflecting on my 50+ years trying to assist smallholder communities. If is written from an emeritus perspective no longer relying on the system, and thus free to write more freely. The article is more factually accurate than politically correct and provides factual examples of what has been discussed above including:
Summary of the project development process explaining the over two years pre-implementation time and effort
Need to address the operational feasibility of innovations
The horrors and tough choices associated with dietary energy deficit
Necessity of facilitating access to mechanization to alleviate poverty in smallholder communities, and
The limits of evaluations to identify and address these concerns.
RE: Global Impact Evaluation Forum 2025: Forging evidence partnerships for effective action
United States of America
Richard Tinsley
Professor Emeritus
Colorado State University
Posted on 29/11/2025
As requested my contribution to the discussion is re-posted below:
Before I get into some of my pet concerns on evaluations please allow me a couple comments on Binod Chapagain remarks. His comment concerning the evaluations being too late in a project’s life to effectively adjust the approach, emphasis one of my frequent comments. That is the biggest contribution of evaluations are how they impact future projects design to better serve the intended beneficiaries. Along with this concern is how difficult it is to adjust ongoing projects. Please note that most major projects, particularly those with external funding and expatriate advisors, have lead times of more than two years and preparation costs exceeding one million dollars, before the advisory team can be contracted, fielded, and finally have detailed interaction with the beneficiaries to determine what their real needs might be. With that much time and effort committed, no one wants to finally learn the project was not fully welcomed by the community it was intended to serve. Also, by the time the implementing team is on the ground, most of the fundamental as to what type of innovation is going to be undertaken with staff, particularly expatriate staff, recruited committed to these innovations. This again limits any major adjustments to project programs. Perhaps a little tweaking the approach but no major adjustments. Again, the evaluations are most effective in guiding future projects.
Also, Binod mentioned that most evaluations were designed to document compliance with original documents as to what was to be accomplished. These evaluations by their very nature usually mostly internal and aimed at appeasing the donors and thus illustrate the project appears successful. This is necessary to ensure project extensions and future projects for the contractor. Thus, the evaluation report needs to be taken with a measure of skepticism for which a few simple computations or analysis could quickly show the flaws. They often rely on the recipient of evaluation reports being too tied up with project management or designing future projects to give the evaluation as reported the scrutiny need to guide future projects, just happy to see what appears as a positive result.
Also, I noticed Tamarie Magaisa mentioned targets for evaluation criteria. This again I fully endorse as necessary to separate successful from unsuccessful projects. Without well established and published targets, stated at the projects conception, projects can easily be proclaimed successful when by most criteria they are total failures. More about this later.
Please now allow me to briefly vent some of my concerns where evaluations have failed to assist smallholder farming communities by overlooking critical criteria or covering up innovations that should have been quickly identified as failure.
With that I will place in the reference an article that I prepared for a symposium here at Colorado State University a little while ago reflecting on my 50+ years trying to assist smallholder communities. If is written from an emeritus perspective no longer relying on the system, and thus free to write more freely. The article is more factually accurate than politically correct and provides factual examples of what has been discussed above including:
I hope you can take an hour or so to download and read the 30-page illustrated article, include some of the linked webpages, and it stimulates you in adjusting in your programs to better serve your beneficiaries be they smallholder farmers or other impoverished people. The weblink to the article is: https://agsci.colostate.edu/smallholderagriculture/wp-content/uploads/sites/77/2023/03/Reflections.pdf
Thank you.
Dick Tinsley
Professor Emeritus
Soil & Crop Sciences Department
Colorado State University