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The impact of technologies or projects on farmers? livelihoods must be considered within the context in which people live and operate. This needs a shift in thinking from crops or commodities as central object of research, to approaches that more comprehensively link crops to the stocks and flows of household assets and activities. A livelihoods approach tackles the key factors that affect livelihoods, providing a way of thinking about diverse influences, and ensuring that the key factors are captured. CIMMYT recently conducted two innovative impact studies, in Mexico and in Nepal, that operationalized a livelihood approach to comprehensively capture impacts, and that use similar methods and metrics.|The first case, described in more depth in the paper, assesses a past project conducted by CIMMYT and a Mexican partner in the late 1990?s in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico. The aim was to increase productivity and preserve the diversity of traditional criollo maize landraces, offer training and demonstrations, and promote post harvest technologies. In 2006 a study was launched to look at its impacts, at changes in farmers? livelihoods since the project, and at learning on how such projects can increase their impact. A livelihood approach was applied, together with participatory research tools and economic analysis. Households were grouped into homogeneous types, based on sets of livelihood capitals. The study captures the effects of the project on livelihoods in terms of the use of criollo maize, training, and use of post-harvest technology, and relate them to household characteristics of participants and non-participants. The impacts range from significant to lower or more mixed entity. Reducing poverty by developing and selecting local and improved maize germplasm was however just one of the goals of the past Oaxaca work; other aims were gaining knowledge on maize diversity, and generating participatory methods for working with farmers. The benefits of the latter are hard to quantify, but should also be added qualitatively to the overall picture of impacts.|An approach similar to that used in Oaxaca, blending qualitative and quantitative tools, participatory methods, economics and using before/after and with/without counterfactuals was used to assess the impacts of the Hill Maize Research Project in Nepal, in areas that share various commonalities. In the Nepal case one aim was to develop and test improved maize varieties through participatory research. The recent impact study captures impacts and outcomes of the past HMRP project in terms of food security, maize productivity, empowerment, social inclusion, and the institutionalization of participatory approaches.|Interestingly, while the results of the Oaxaca study, located in the area of origin of maize, Mexico, indicate a moderate use of improved maize, declines in maize area, and a loss of the role of maize as commercial crop, they contrast with Nepal where improved maize varieties play an increasingly important roles for livelihoods. In Nepal maize was indeed a way to reach marginalized farmers. The two cases provide lessons on operationalizing impact assessment through a livelihoods lens, so to help capturing the broader and actual impacts of International Public Goods produced by CGIAR centers and partners: in the specific case of these two projects, maize varietal and post-harvest technology, training and capacity building, and the operational use of participatory approaches for research.

Socioeconomics Program

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