Evaluation of the Fruit Tree Productivity Project 2013
Morocco, 2013
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MAR_2013_MCC-FTP_v01_M
Evaluation of the Fruit Tree Productivity Project 2013
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| Morocco | MAR |
Independent Performance Evaluation
Date Tree Irrigation Project:
The specific objectives of this evaluation are threefold:
- Performance evaluation of project activities, like the mid-term evaluation, based on elements related to relevance, efficacy, efficiency, coherence, and sustainability.
- Measurement of noticeable results at the end of the Compact, including effects and impacts (both positive and negative, expected or unexpected) on beneficiaries, institutions, project governance, and the environment, as well as the perceived change among stakeholders, including community members in the project areas, regarding the project itself and the results achieved.
- Analysis of the degree to which project mid-term evaluation recommendations were implemented, to see if they affected project performance.
The evaluation will also make recommendations for strengthening and capitalizing on project results and draw lessons to build upon during the design and implementation phase of similar projects in the future.
Extension Project:
The emphasis of this performance evaluation is primarily on the economic and financial assessment of one specific activity of the Fruit Tree Productivity Project, namely the "Extension of fruit tree plantations". The evaluation is commissioned by APP/ MCC to take the outcome of the previous exercises as the starting point; revise the assumption made therein in light of actual situation in terms of outputs achieved and likely outcomes to be realized, and fine-tune the working hypothesis with respect to the key variables such as the yields and production costs.
The approach of the present exercise has focused on three aspects that are of crucial importance to the economic and financial impact assessment of the project. (1) The role and the significance of cereal crops in the livelihood of the smallholders in the project area, (2) the motivation of the smallholder to switch from traditional agricultural practices (TIP) being used in fruit tree husbandry to improved agricultural practices (IAP); and (3) the willingness of the smallholders to internalize wholly or partly the cost associated with the protection of the natural resource base.
The impact of the olive expansion activity is potentially positive on farmers' income, on food security, and on reducing poverty:
The Base constant-price ERR was estimated at 12.2% suggesting favorable outcomes on beneficiaries as a result of the intervention. While the ERR depends on a number of variables associated with fruit production, namely yields of fruit tree, oil content, prices and agricultural practices used by participating farmers, it also depends on the whether intercropping of cereal crops will be practiced during the life of the project and on their yields and prices. Intercropping will remain a critical factor in the economic viability of this project, especially if fruit tree yields are lower and/or production costs are higher than their corresponding basic values. This ERR corresponds to an average intercropping rate of 78%. Without intercropping the project economic viability is questionable.
The ERR was estimated based on the assumption that the contractually required 100% planting success rate is achieved. If this success rate is reduced by 20% and 30% the corresponding ERR is estimated at 11% and 10% respectively.
Due to lack of reliable information regarding the status of the Soil and Water Conservation works, no attempt was made to assess the environmental benefits of these works and their impact on ERR. One important observation is that the ERR would be if the investment cost is reduced by a percentage equivalent to the weight of the in total investment cost.
- At full development and thanks to newly established fruit trees along with intercropping, the food security of the participating households is likely to be enhanced.
- While the available information is not sufficient to confirm that the project interventions have reached the real poor in the project area, one thing is certain is that 80% of the farmers in the selected villages obtained 83% of the areas planted. The average area planted by each beneficiary is about 1.56Ha. The Provinces that have been targeted by the project have high poverty levels.
- During its implementation over 2009-2013, the planting activity generated the equivalent of 5.6 million man-days of employment opportunities. Tree planting activities under the Project are labor intensive and hence expected to generate additional seasonal, but sustained, employment opportunities directly associated with the value chain of fruit trees such as pruning, treatment and harvesting, transportation services and transformation, in addition to casual labor. It is estimated that at full development, an average of 4,700 to 5,000 recurrent seasonal employment opportunities would be created annually.
Other
Date Tree Irrigation Project:
Individuals, agricultural organizations
Extension Project:
Individuals
Version
Anonymized dataset for public distribution
Scope
| Topic | Vocabulary |
|---|---|
| Agriculture and Irrigation | MCC Sector |
| Gender | MCC Sector |
Coverage
Date Tree Irrigation Project:
Marrakech, Souss Massa Draa, Tanger-Tétouan, and Fez Boulemane
Extension Project:
158 perimeters in 17 provinces covering 5 agro-climatic zones
Date Tree Irrigation Project:
Farmers and agricultural organizations in implementation areas
Extension Project:
Subsistence smallholders who practice traditional rain-fed agriculture (mainly cereals)
Producers and sponsors
| Name |
|---|
| Mathematica (Current) |
| NORC at the University of Chicago (Former - Date Tree) |
| Mohammed Ameziane Hassani (Former - Expansion) |
| Name |
|---|
| Millennium Challenge Corporation |
Sampling
Date Tree Irrigation Project:
In order to make the farmers' survey more convenient and efficient, NORC will conduct two-stage stratified sampling, with the primary units as areas and secondary units as farmers. The same sample weighting will be associated with each farmer in the sample to make calculations of the parameters and details simpler.
Stratifying at the permieter level results in a more efficient sampling strategy, controlling the heterogeneity of the indicators that constitute the project's logic model. The goal is to obtain strata within which the activities of the surveyed farmers would be indicative of most of those in the population, and which are significantly different than those of the farmers' activities in other strata. Implicit stratification also provides better geographical coverage of the population.
In each stratum, the planned approach is to proportionally select the same number of farmers from to ensure proportional representation at the stratum level. Sample perimeters will be drawn independently in each stratum, and the sample of farmers is independently drawn in each perimeter. The effectiveness of this sampling technique is all the more important if agricultural areas inside the perimeters are heterogeneous vis-a-vis the indicators to be measured.
Extension Project:
Given the nature of the assignment, no formal sample survey was used. Instead, Farmers' focus group discussions combined with direct observations of the plantation perimeters and informants interviews were organized.
Focus Groups
Three types of focus groups:
- Beneficiary focus groups, these are farmers from the plantations perimeters, which were completed and handed back to the farmers;
- Non beneficiary focus groups composed of farmers who have not benefited from any of the project activities and,
- The third focus groups are from farmers who have benefited from other similar project in the past and who have fully mature and well developed plantations.
Taking into account the time that was allocated to field work, fourteen perimeters were selected using purposeful sampling approach were a number of key parameters were taken into account including: the agro-climatic zones of the project area, the plantation status (planted, maintained and handed over to farmers, completed but still under maintenance, not completed), and the hand-over date, geographic distribution and concentration of these plantation, the biding criteria was that the list selected perimeter were from those that were handed over in 2011 or earlier. This was necessary to ensure that farmers have at least one full season where the operation and maintenance of the parcel was their responsibility.
Focus groups were selected from the same selected perimeters. This choice was purposefully used to reflect, to the extent possible, the post-project completion situation in terms of adjustment of farmers to new environment, appreciation of the project interventions, degree of commitment to perform periodic maintenance of the SWC works and adoption of improved practices intercropping practices. The farmers association. Of each selected perimeter was asked to select between 8 and 10 famers who satisfy the following:
- Farmers should be form the perimeters that were planted and maintained in 2008, and 2009 and handed over on 2011 or earlier
- Farmers' land holdings should be between 3 and 5 Ha.
- Farmers should neither be from the same village nor from the same family
Fourteen focus groups meeting were organized, involving 110 farmers from 14 perimeters. The number of questions discussed was around 6, each of which was allocated 25 minutes discussion time each. Non-beneficiary focus groups were selected from farmers living the same area as the beneficiary farmers. Farmers for the third focus group type were selected from similar projects that were completed in the past and where plantations were fully developed. Farmers
Direct Observation
The purpose of this part is to provide a different perspective to the evaluation exercise, and to supplement and or validate collected /existing data. The visits were carried out to the farmers' parcels to be visited will be selected from among the selected perimeters 4. These parcels fall into four categories:
- Parcels that have been ceded to farmers and in which works (development and maintenance) have been completed in line with the agreed technical specification;
- Parcels in which all the development works have been completed but have not been handed over to farmers as yet;
- Parcels of non-participant farmers that share common characteristics (before project) with project participants;
- Fully developed tree plantation parcels that were developed by other projects.
Informants
Informant's discussions involved series of consultations and interviews of t the project staff, CT (Centers de Travaux) supervisors, contractors, TA representatives, research and specialized institution, ministry of agriculture, specialists in tree plantation and soil and water conservation. The purpose was for clarification of issues that have been identified during focus groups discussion and from direct observation visits.
Expansion Project:
Participation was very good, a total of 14 focus groups were convened involving 110 farmers from 14 perimeters. The average time spent in each focus group was about 120 minutes, and an average of 10 farmers per group.
Survey instrument
Date Tree Irrigation Project:
Four questionnaires were used: two farmer surveys (one in irrigated PMH and the other in oasis zones) and two OPA surveys (one for the AUEA survey and one for the Cooperative survey).
Data collection
| Start | End | Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 2013 | Baseline Date Tree |
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| C & O Marketing | Date Tree Irrigation Project |
| Mohammed Ameziane Hassani | Independent Evaluator |
Data processing
Date Tree Irrigation Project:
Data cleaning involves detecting, correcting, deleting, or reporting incorrect data format errors, incomplete data, inconsistent data, etc... This is a very difficult and complex task that requires a significant number of internal consistency checks, it is indeed common to find values given by respondents which do not seem reasonable and therefore need to be identified and corrected. The Mission Director, the data quality specialist and two NORC statisticians on the evaluation team will work with C & O Marketing to develop these controls and to clean and production databases.
Extension Project:
The process was iterative concentrating on triangulation and logical editing technique. 1-farmers were consulted to provide initial inputs with respect to key parameters and variables. Followed, by direct observation, informants interview and consultation of published data. The Data editing focused on the following aspects in order to:
a. Fine tune the yields estimates of olives and almonds, labor requirements and input use;
b. Elaborate cropping patterns, crop and typical farm budgets;
c. Postulate educated hypotheses regarding the adoption rate, family consumption of olive products (food security) and sales as table olive and or/as olive oil;
d. Assemble the actual direct and indirect investment costs by year, by perimeter by agro climatic zones and by type of plantations. "With" and "Without" soil and water conservation costs and "With" and "Without" indirect investment costs;
e. Specify different scenarios for calculations of Financial and Economic IRRs.
Access policy
Millennium Challenge Corporation
Millennium Challenge Corporation
https://data.mcc.gov/evaluations/index.php/catalog/202
Cost: None
Data Access
| Is signing of a confidentiality declaration required? |
|---|
| no |
Date Tree Irrigation Project:
The National Opinion Research Center at the Univeristy of Chicago. June 2015. Final Evaluation of the Fruit Tree Productivity Project (PAF). NORC at the University of Chicago.
Extension Project:
Hassani, M. (2013). Final Report: Fruit Tree Productivity, Extension Component.
Contacts
| Name | |
|---|---|
| Monitoring & Evaluation Division of the Millennium Challenge Corporation | impact-eval@mcc.gov |
Metadata production
DDI_MAR_2013_MCC-FTP_v01_M
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Millennium Challenge Corporation | Review of Metadata |
2017-12-15
Metadata version
Version 2 (July 2020)
2020-07-31
Version 2 (July 2020). Edited version based on the original version (DDI-MCC-MAR-FTPP-IND-2013-v1) that was produced by the Millennium Challenge Corporation.