Meeting with the LIVES PIP team

ILRI- Info center breakout room

Day 1- June 28, 2012

Discussion points

  1. Assessment of PIP data collection experiences

Each regional team share their experience, challenges,

  1. Challenges- Data reliability and availability and its implications for future work- Each regional team explained their experiences in data inconsistency, availability of data in the LIVES format was a challenge as the district’s reporting system deviates from what we are asking.
  2. Ways of triangulating the Data, to increase the quality/ reliability needs to be thought of

Possible solutions to get quality data at district level

a)Institutionalizing data collection the way we want and get those data on a consistent basis is a major scenario that needs to be considered in the LIVES project implementation. Tip from Dr. Berhanu - Never trust a data when you get it. Try to get it from different sources

  1. Value chain and Value system- Dr. Berhanu presents

What is the difference with value chain actors and value chain service providers?

Actors are involved in ownership of commodity/product- could be producers, processor, input suppliers trader and consumer. They all own the product at one point

Service providers – two types: Public and private. Public like extension, research, market…. These do not exercise ownership of the commodity. They provide service sometimes for free but also in fee like business development services (BDS). But, at times service could be provided by the value chain actor itself and then it becomes part of the value chain activity

Services are of two types- physical/ tangible- like seeds, AI… Or it could be business development services (soft skills like consultancy, knowledge, skill…)

A post harvest owner - Usually post harvest activities are cleaning, sorting, grading, storing…… These can be done by the owner on farm; In this case its part of the value chain actor. But if the owner buys somebody’s time to do this, then its classified as a service. Same applies for milk/ butter processing. The question here is who does the post harvest activity (the actor or a service provider?)!!! The word post harvest usually used to refer to activities done at the farm gate level.

Longer value chain is only expensive when the nodes are not effective. The performance of one node in the value chain affects the performance of another.

There are threetypes of values

Physical-

Time- Storage

Temporal- value addition because of transportation (eg. buying a 20USD shoe in the US for 50USD in Addis.

Value chain System- Necessarily, there is an interaction between value chain actors and service providers. When all these interactions take we expect to have some sort regulations, modalities, institutions… this is what we call a VALUE CHAIN SYSTEM.

  1. Impact pathways concepts and PMF

b)Resources- inputs we use (human resource, material, office spaces…..)

c) Activities (our actual works eg. surveys, trainings, data analysis, KM, research, promotion…)-

d)Outputs (what our activities produce. This is the direct consequence of our work-egcapacity building

e)Immediate outcomes- direct consequence of our outputs- eg. application of skill/knowledge developed

f)Intermediate outcomes- consequence of the immediate outcomes- something that changes. Eg. increased productivity

g)Ultimate outcome(impact)- something that changes on the world/ at ground level in a significant and sustainable way . eg. social change, environmental betterment

In LIVES, we are interested on the result component of the impact pathway. We define our result consequences through the use of the logic model. We’ll use the LOGIC model to make sure the impact pathways interconnect.

To measure our results (immediate, intermediate and ultimate), we prepare performance measurement framework.

Research- in LIVES we’ll have 3 research types that we’ll do: Diagnostic, Action, and Impact research

Promotion- Targeted learning sites, where LIVES will be working on, and learning sites which could be from AGP, neighboring districts. The other could be a broader one for general consumption. Eg.- organize conferences, the EAP , participate in national and international conferences.

Gender: Ways of incorporating the gender component into the activities and outputs should clearly come out on the impact pathway. For this, there will be a strategy that enables women involved on the overall intervention. Eg.Get women involved in MSc training, input supply….

  1. LIVES Performance management framework- to show how we’ll know what were achieved. Indicators will be identified on the PMF. Indicators are put at each outcome level.
  2. Indicator of the ultimate outcome of LIVES project is “increased sales of targeted commodities of the producers in that value chain is 100% more”. Why it has increased does not come here.
  3. Indicators of the intermediate outcome- Data sources for indicators of these outcomes are many (records, focus group discussion, computation...). This is done on purpose- for a triangulation purpose. What is expected is numbers, outreaches…. No details. Because more details, more confusion to readers at this stage!!!! Therefore, data collected for research and reporting are separate planned!!!
  4. Immediate outcome and output- We are responsible to do these. These are our actual activities!
  1. PA sampling method and sample PAs

In LIVES we have the six commodities (Beef, Dairy, Poultry, Apiculture, Small ruminant and Irrigation Agriculture). There are many commodity combinations which could be drawn from this. In our case we have 37 unique commodity combinations.

The total number of PAs that we have in the 30 LIVES districts is 902, of which 119 have no potential of any of the commodities. So we drop the 119 PAs and remain with 783 PAs.

  • ¼ of the total PAs we have is taken for sampling and this result in 194 PAs, which will be sampled for the baseline. Sampling strategy is on the slides of Dr. Berhanu. It’s on the wiki
  • Commodity combinations and PA sampling is summarized on the STATA (prepared by Aklilu- attached on the wiki as well)

How to get Household data:

  • Involving Kebele administrative, DAs,
  • In order to improve the quality of the HH data we have already- WE ASSIGN SOMEBODY to re-do it
  1. Baseline guideline – will be uploaded on the wiki after below comments and suggestions are incorporated

Comments on the guideline and discussions on how we get the data

  • Dairy animals ( calf(female), heifers, and cows) need to be included
  • How do we get the data on amount of milk produced???
  • Get the number of lactating cows, extrapolate milk produced, estimate sell,…
  • We cannot ask the proportion of milk that is sold by HHs in PAs. We should have a way to make an estimate (*there might be tools that help to extrapolate this data. Maybe ask Dr. Azage-says Kettema.)
  • To increase the quality of the data we get from focus group we have to be careful and in the representation.Eg. include milk trader/egg collector
  • Bring people from sub villages who have aggregate level knowledge at each focus group discussion in the PAs

Discussion on the guideline continues on day 2. Next page

Day 2- June 29, 2012

Discussion on the baseline guideline continues;

  • What do we include when we say beef cattle- we’ll include all male animals ( young bulls, steer, and oxen)
  • Fattened small ruminants do (not) represent the actual scenario at ground level- All small ruminants (SR) are produced for market and for their meat. Instead of saying fattened why not say improved SR production practices. By this we meant by feeding them better feed, genetic improvement, management practices, health, linkage to the market…. Depending on the location.
  • Transitional and modern beehives are terms not used in the rest of the world. It should be changed into Top bar and frame hive respectively instead.
  • Should harvesting cycle be included? If so how??- A cycle is a season. There is a maximum of three cycles, with the exception of Jimma area, which could be more (4 times). Will we get the cycle in a PA?
  • We should include bee colony number in the hives included, DAs should be able to give us this data
  • Irrigation has frequency/ cycle as well. We should also consider this while collecting the data
  • Focus on irrigation for vegetables and fruits not cereals when collecting the data
  • It would be more precise to get the number of trees in Fruits. Is it available? Lets try to get both area and number of trees.
  • Keep in mind that DAs have a calculation of what area a specific tree occupies. Then we may be able to calculate number of trees in a Ha. But then this will not be a baseline actual sample.
  • Number of assemblers involved in marketing of the LIVES commodities should be brought from focus group discussion/ interviews at district level, Zonal and regional level
  1. Data collection planning
  • We have actually 6 weeks per zone for data collection. Its advised that we should finish data collection by the end of august.
  • Some PAs are not accessible during rainy season. The option here is to replace those PAs with similar commodity are accessible
  • The time is a peak season (cultivation) so we might only be able to find people on weekends. We should plan to be flexible
  • Composition of Key informants at PA level; who do we propose? It should be the following:-
  • DAs (3)
  • PA executive committee/ PA administrator
  • Representatives of PA sub groups ( six to seven per PA) or Community leaders at a PA level (people who have knowledge beyond themselves)
  • PA level traders/assemblers
  • Women association representative
  • Youth association representative
  • Cooperatives representatives (if there is in a PA)
  • Key informants- People with deep and broad knowledge about the subject. Purpose of the key informants is triangulations. Use focus groups first and then triangulate with key informants. Key informants could be any of the following
  • Experts
  • Elderly
  • Successful farmers
  • Popular/ respected farmers
  • How we do it- Organize PA level meeting – two focus groups ( Male-HH and Fem-HH)
  • Incentives for focus group discussion- how can we manage this? We need to think of ways of reward
  • Pay farmers and not DAs, because they are already by their bureau???
  • Provide food, refreshment
  • Providing money will arise problem in our future work. They will expect money always

Triangulation

  • Use records and key informants
  • Collect data from the focus group and triangulate with the records and key informants. If it’s too far apart; go back to the focus group again and push them to get the data.

Invitation for Project Implementation Plan Workshop

Who will be invited:-

Regional person

  • Livestock (either from agency or bureau)
  • Crop director (from bureau of agriculture) / irrigation process owner (if he/she deals with irrigation agronomy and if he/she is on a high level)
  • cooperative representative
  • Gender representative

Regional Research

  • Livestock director
  • Crop director

Zonal office – from the 10 zones

  • Head of the office of agriculture

Focal persons who helped us during the PIP data collection

Participants

  1. Dirk Hoekstra
  2. Berhanu Gebremedhin
  3. Gebremedhin Woldewhaid
  4. Dawit Woldemariam
  5. Ephrem Tessema
  6. Nigatu Alemayehu
  7. Kettema Yilma
  8. Yishak Baredo
  9. Tialhun Gebey
  10. YasinGetahun
  11. Aklilu Bogale
  12. Fanos Mekonnen