Learning is at the heart of AgResults

Which factors empowered private sector companies to develop, market, and sell on-farm storage devices to smallholders in Kenya? Which factors hindered others' success? This Lessons Learned article explores the perspectives of those competitors who participated in the Kenya On-Farm Storage Challenge Project.

What were some of the challenges and opportunities that arose among the private sector companies that participated in the Nigeria Aflasafe Challenge Project? This Lessons Learned article shares insights that emerged from discussing competitors' experiences and perspectives.

This presentation for COP24 highlights the AgResults Vietnam Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Challenge Project, specifically efforts of private sector participants to scale up improved technologies to help farmers increase rice yields while decreasing GHG emissions. The project aims to reach 20,000 smallholder farmer households across the Thai Binh province in the Red River Delta.

Written by Tanager, the Project Manager for the Kenya On-Farm Storage Challenge Project, this report summarizes the objectives, approach, and achievements of the project, which aimed to encourage sales of on-farm grain storage devices to smallholder farmers.

This presentation includes an overview of AgResults pull mechanisms, the evaluation framework for the external evaluation and initial lessons learned. The authors are Tulika Narayan and Denise Mainville of Abt Associates and Denise Mainville Consulting.

In this presentation for the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) Congress 2018, Dr. William Salas explores the role that remote sensing and modeling technologies have played to gather critical data on the efficacy of different rice growing practices.

In this presentation for the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) Congress 2018, Dr. Tran Thu Ha illustrates key features of the most effective technology packages developed by competitors in the Vietnam Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Challenge Project.

This presentation from the Scaling Up Conference at Purdue University in September 2018 explores how private sector companies participating in the Kenya On-Farm Storage Challenge Project employed different tactics to increase smallholder farmers' access to and use of on-farm storage devices.

This report presents baseline evaluation results for the Uganda Legume Seed Challenge Project, which was terminated early. It includes findings from a survey of 1,800 smallholders, in-depth interviews with a subset of farmers, and seed quality assessment results using seed from 300 farmers who reported using quality seed.

How do you design an effective approach to project verification in a Pay-for-Results project? This Lessons Learned article explains how the Kenya On-Farm Storage Challenge Project ran into challenges with its original verification structure and course-corrected using survey data.

This Lessons Learned article explores the experience of AgResults during the Brucellosis Challenge design, launch, and Year 1 implementation phases.

This report from January 2018 presents the findings from a Randomized Rural Household Survey (RRHS) conducted in 14 counties of Kenya as part of the AgResults Kenya On-Farm Storage Challenge Project. The RRHS aimed to understand the proportion of smallholder farmers living in those 14 counties where the project worked and to estimate the number of on-farm storage devices purchased by those farmers.

This Lessons Learned Brief provides an overview of the verification process followed to gauge rice crop growth and GHG emission data among farms participating in the Vietnam Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Challenge Project.

The Nigeria Aflasafe Challenge Project was the first AgResults Pay-for-Results prize contest. This Lessons Learned article outlines the project's development objectives and reflects on the role and value of the PfR structure.

Pull mechanisms require a solid understanding of the market and the motivations of the private sector. This November 2017 brief, with examples from AgResults’ work in Kenya, provides guidance for development practitioners interested in incorporating pull mechanisms in their own work.

This Lessons Learned article analyzes initial project design decisions and the adaptation that followed as part of the AgResults Zambia Biofortified Maize Challenge Project. As challenges emerged - including a disconnect between supply and demand, variations in government policy, and an unrealistic incentive structure - the project had to adjust to get into a better position to achieve its objectives and sales goals.

This Learning Brief discusses the challenges in creating a verification baseline for the Vietnam Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Challenge Project, which aims to develop, test, and scale up innovations to reduce GHG emissions while increase rice yields in the Red River Delta. The brief reviews the approach to set this baseline, involving household surveys, analysis, and stakeholder buy-in.

Shifting policies and political objectives prompted AgResults to adjust the original design of the Uganda Improved Legume Seed Challenge Project. This Lessons Learned article explores the reasoning behind these design changes and the insights that emerged.

Governments and philanthropists are increasingly considering prize contests to spark creative solutions to thorny social problems. But only a few contests have been systematically evaluated. This March 2017 evaluation framework — based on AgResults’ work to evaluate Brucellosis vaccine development — can be applied to any innovation challenge.

The Uganda Legume Seed Challenge Project’s evaluation design envisions a performance evaluation using a pre-post design to assess project success in creating a smallholder-inclusive market for quality legume seed. It uses a structure-conduct-performance framework to assess market impact and a baseline-endline comparison of smallholder farmer survey data to understand smallholder benefits.