Evaluation & Impact Assessment

Interventions to improve organic and agroecological farming systems must be based on solid evidence on what works and what does not. Impact evaluation is comprised of both rigorous econometric and modelling approaches to assess the effects of policies, technologies, capacity development and other related factors. In the Socioeconomic Department at FiBL, the group applies these approaches to evaluate a range of sustainability strategies, such as agroforestry field schools, voluntary certification schemes, and organic breeding innovations. The focus of the group lies on assessing economic and livelihood effects, alongside a strong interest in combining economic and environmental performance indicators, for example assessing eco-efficiency outcomes. The projects span are located in a wide variety of regions, from Europe to West Africa and Southeast Asia. Impact evaluation capabilities of the group are complemented by competences in adoption studies (identifying drivers for innovation uptake), monitoring (tracking changes throughout an intervention), innovation system assessments (describing networks and interactions) and scaling analyses (understanding scaling potential).

Currently, the group is investigating the following impact, adoption and scaling issues in organic and agroecological farming systems:

• Impacts of regulations and innovations for boosting the use of organic seed in Germany, Italy and the UK
• Impacts of organic certification on the economic performance of dairy farms in 16 countries in Europe
• Adoption of carbon farming in Switzerland
• Impacts of participatory guarantee systems in vegetable farming in Vietnam
• Adoption of agroforestry and impact of agroforestry field schools in Mali and Senegal
• Global metrics for assessing research and extension systems

Contact

• Christian Grovermann