One Acre Fund seminar presentation
•Télécharger en tant que PPTX, PDF•
2 j'aime•2,037 vues
Eric Solomonson of One Acre Fund made this seminar presentation on 11 February 2015 as part of the Agroforestry Development Impact Seminar (ADIS) series. He described the organization's model and how it has already reached more than 200,000 smallholder farmers in East and Southern Africa.
Recommandé
Contenu connexe
Tendances
Tendances (20)
En vedette
En vedette (11)
Similaire à One Acre Fund seminar presentation
Similaire à One Acre Fund seminar presentation (20)
Plus de World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
Plus de World Agroforestry (ICRAF) (20)
Dernier
Dernier (20)
One Acre Fund seminar presentation
- 1. OAF Town HallOne Acre Fund Taking Agricultural Technologies to Scale February 11th, 2015 – Eric Solomonson, Agriculture Research Manager
- 2. 2 Today’s agenda The One Acre Fund operating model What we do at scale Where we work Scaling new technologies Our research platform Looking forward Longer-term impact work Q&A
- 3. 3 The One Acre Fund Operating Model
- 4. 4 What we offer …delivered to farmers doorsteps. A complete service bundle…
- 5. 5 How we deliver Our Distribution Network (Kenya) 806 input delivery points All within walking distance 1,100 tons of seed 8,000 tons of fertilizer 93,000 solar lamps 135,000 farmers
- 7. 7 Our Impact Scale: Families served Impact: 2x farm profit per acre $- $50 $100 $150 $200 $250 $300 Control Test Sustainability: Earned revenue ($ USD)
- 8. 8 Where we work Kenya Rwanda Burundi Tanzania Uganda Malawi Ethiopia Direct Program Fertilizer Services Seed Services Training Services
- 10. 10 Product selection We select products based on their ability to improve farmer livelihoods, specifically focusing on the following criteria: Impact: can a product significantly increase a farmer’s income? We are increasingly looking at impact through a long-term lens as well, considering soil fertility and environmental impacts. Adoptability: are a significant number of farmers willing to purchase this product? This is often a function of cost, cultural practice, preference, and simplicity Operability: can we scale this product with a minimal increase in operational complexity? This is often a function of product availability, size, and storability.
- 11. 11 Impact x Scale = Social Good Scale Impact (per client) Social Good
- 12. 12 Research Stations Kakamega, Kenya Gucha, Kenya Kendu Bay, Kenya Rubengera, Rwanda Muramvya, Burundi Iringa, Tanzania Kakamega Research Station • 10 acres • 15 different crops • 73 treatments • Randomized Complete Block Design (6 replicates)
- 13. 13 Farmer Trials 2015 Long Rains trials include: Small-quantity lime application Urea vs CAN topdress Compost application Maize-bean intercrop Maize-soybean intercrop Leaf count-based topdress Bean disease management Green gram agronomy IR maize seed in striga areas Zai pits in low-rainfall areas Pigeon pea agronomy Kenya (2014 Long Rains) 21 trials 7 different crops 3,135 farmers ¼ acre split plot design Sites are geo-tagged (most) soils are sampled Yields are physically measured Farmer preferences are recorded
- 14. 14 Scale Trials We are looking to: 1. Understand real-world farmer adoption levels 2. Understand obstacles or limitations to offering this new technology at larger scale. Additionally, we run scale trials to: 1. Understand what marketing techniques may work best for different products. 2. Understand which maize varieties are likely to perform best in different areas.
- 16. 16 Input from the best We get a lot of our program content from direct farmer feedback. However, we need input from a wide range of experts to take our work to the next level including The Research Community Industry Professionals Government We view ourselves as scaling partners with logistical expertise.
- 17. 17
- 18. 18
- 19. 19
- 21. 21 Our work with agroforestry Focus on Grevillea robusta We distribute 10g of seed to each farmer in the program (80,000 in 2014). We provide training on how to properly plant and transplant seedlings. We encourage farmers to grow their trees for at least six years before cutting.
- 23. 23
- 24. 24 Long term soil health Western Rwanda – 951 samplesWestern Kenya – 1,410 samples
- 25. 25 Sharing results • Agriculture Innovation • Farm Finance • Social Enterprise • Agriculture Policy • Failures • Annual Reports
- 26. 26 Questions?
Notes de l'éditeur
- To start off and provide some context I’d like to talk a bit about what we do and where we work.
- There are essentially two components of our program, the first is a complete bundle products and services… Improved Seed and Fertilizer Maize, bean, sukuma wiki, grevillea + DAP, CAN, Urea, NPK (range) We work with seed companies, fertilizer companies, national research institutions, and international research institutions to find the best varieties possible Credit 8,000KES average loan size Flexible repayment terms Incentives 98%+ repayment rate Training Work with subject matter experts Simple approaches (cracking maize seeds, interactive activities) Broadly applicable Post-harvest support Products (actellic, bags) Training Incentives (storage loan, tatu hadi tatu)
- The second component of the core program is our distribution network One of the reasons our program is successful is that we are able to remove as many barriers to adoption as possible. One key barrier is geography. 806 sites – each of which contains about 170 farmers and one field officer Each site has a delivery location We are in the process this week and next of delivering: Seed Fertilizer
- What are we delivering? A wide range of seed, fertilizer, and other products seen here. Core program – maize seed + fertilizer Top ups are extra options with varying degrees of adoption These include… We provide recommendations as to which maize varieties farmers should plant in each district based on historical performance, growing conditions, and farmer feedback.
- There are a lot of different ways to evaluate success. A few that we focus on are as follows: Scale In 2014 we served about 200,000 farmers across all of our countries of operation – we expect this to increase to 500,000 by 2016 and 1M by 2020. Impact Our primary impact metric is farmer profit – improved yields, input use efficiencies, soil fertility improvements, new crops all ultimately manifest in profit. That said, we realize profit is a one-dimensional metric. We are also in the process of looking at long-term soil fertility and environmental impacts as well as improvements (or lack-thereof) in farm family quality of life. Sustainability We operate based on business principles, charging farmers for all products and services and treating them as clients. Our operations were about 75% self-sufficient in 2014 and we are striving to continue increasing this number.
- The core model is oriented around delivering products and services that would otherwise be limited in a particular area. This means the content of each country’s program varies. At the moment, three general categories: Kenya / Tanzania / Uganda / Malawi – core program focusing on seed, fertilizer, training, and credit Rwanda / Burundi – core program with less seed, more fertilizer focused + gov’t services Ethiopia – government services, advising on agricultural credit, extension, and seed marketing Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania are core countries while all others are pilots. We are planning to expand pilot programs in to one new country per year.
- In addition to operating our core program at scale, we’ve made significant investments in applied research across the countries we work in. Our Kenyan and Rwandan programs tend to produce the highest volume of research. For this presentation I’ll be focusing primarily on our Kenyan research program, but the principles apply across countries.
- The core content of our trials is what I would call “validation trials.” We are looking to scale agricultural products and practices that have been shown to be successful either in our context or others. However, we need to confirm that these new technologies are impactful, adoptable, and operable. Impact We primarily define impact in financial terms, but are increasingly investing in making sure the impact of our program is lasting and environmentally sustainable. This has included work with the Spectral Diagnostics Lab here at ICRAF to sample thousands of soils. Adoptability We could generate massive impact per farmer, but it wouldn’t mean anything if farmers aren’t willing to adopt. We aren’t a charity and we don’t give products or trainings away for free. What we do needs to be attractive to farmers – this means the price needs to be right, preferences need to be addressed, and a new technology needs to be user friendly. Operability A new product could generate massive impact, and every farmer could want it, but that doesn’t matter if there isn’t a supply legally available at sufficient scale. Additionally, we need to be able to physically fit things on trucks, our Field Officers need to be able to deliver a new training in addition to the dozens of other topics they need to know.
- To further illustrate this point… Impact per client, at scale, is how we evaluate true impact, or social good. From the previous slide, scale is a function of both adoptability and operability. People often consider adoptability of a new technology, but often neglect to think about operability. Even in the absence of One Acre Fund… seed companies need to be able to produce and sell quality seed, agrodealers need to be able to store, market, and sell all of their products, government agencies need to be able to train extension agents Without these scale drivers impact just can’t be realized. Without both of these components – impact and scale – it is impossible to move the needle.
- We run trials in three different platforms – research station, farmer, and scale trials. The first is the research station. We have three research stations in Kenya and one in each of our other countries of core operation. Our Kenyan research stations represent mid-altitude, high-altitude, and low-rainfall growing conditions. Additionally, our low-rainfall station provides a natural environment for striga trials and our high-altitude station provides an environment for natural pressure MLN trials. All are run using 10x10m plots with six replicates in a randomized complete block design. Kakamega example above
- The second platform is farmer trials. In 2014, we ran farmer trials with over 3,000 farmers, across 21 treatments and 7 crops in western Kenya. Each trial typically consists of 100-300 farmers. The goal of these trials is to evaluate: The yield differential – between a control (usually our core program method) and the treatment under more realistic conditions than the station Farmer preference – in particular whether the farmer preferred T or C and whether they would purchase T next year Scale potential – this is limited scale obviously, but this is an initial evaluation of our ability to provide a training or source a new product. We are in the process of collecting thousands more soil samples to establish baselines for our 2015 trials, which will be submitted to the Spectral Diagnostics Lab here for analysis. A few examples of farmer trials we’ll be running in 2015 are as follows: Briefly read through list
- The third platform is scale trials. If we can show that a new technology works well and farmers seem to want it, we’ll see how many farmers actually purchase it. Farmers pay for the goods and services provided during farmer trials, but they have agreed to allocate the space and manage the trial before necessarily knowing what they will receive. For scale trials the onus is fully on the farmer to decide if this is something they want. So we see a slightly more realistic adoption figure. Additionally, we use this platform to run marketing and variety trials. We want to both understand natural demand levels for new technologies, but also how we could more effectively boost demand. This could be with things like demo plots, demo days, or video marketing. As noted before, we offer 11 different maize varieties, appropriate for a range of conditions. We also provide recommendations as to which varieties should be grown where. In order to further bolster those recommendations we are running variety trials to better gauge performance and farmer preference.
- In addition to guiding research, the three platforms I just described are also used as steps to scaling new agricultural technologies. The key is that the two concepts – research and scale – are far from mutually exclusive, and in fact are highly complimentary. With each step toward scale, we are presented with the opportunity to learn something new: At phase 1, or the research station, we are focusing on establishing a baseline impact potential under more ideal, controlled conditions. We are also looking to better understand how complex or difficult a new technology may be to adopt. At phase 2, or farmer trials, we are focusing on confirming likely impact under more realistic conditions, as well as how complex the new technology is. At phase 3, or scale trials, we are focusing on confirming adoption and operability at larger scale At phase 4, we have included the new technology in our scaled offering, either as part of the core package or a top up / add-on purchase. We’ll also be performing core M&E at this phase.
- There’s an additional phase that wasn’t highlighted in the previous slide, essentially a phase 0. This is the phase at which we identify problems and determine the hypothesis that we’d like to test. This requires engagement with… Farmers – through client feedback from field staff and call ins Research community – from institutions like ICRAF and other CG centers, national research institutions, universities, private institutions, and others Industry professionals– seed and fertilizer companies Government – ministry extension, KEPHIS, etc We view ourselves as scaling partners with logistical expertise in this relationship.
- We have giant warehouses capable of holding thousands of tons of inputs.
- We have a network of trucks that can deliver seed and fertilizer and other products directly to farmers.
- We have the capacity to deliver trainings, but the whole process requires exception products and expert input to succeed.
- Much of what we do is geared around single season impacts, however that doesn’t mean that we neglect what’s important in the longer term.
- One area where we’re focusing on long-term impacts is our work with agroforestry. Our primary focus is on enabling farmers to grow grevillea robusta as a source of both environmental and financial value. We deliver high quality tree seeds sourced from across Kenya We provide trainings on how to properly plant and transplant seedlings And we encourage them to keep their trees in the ground as long as possible, but at least 6 years. Our goal is to have over 6 million trees planted in western Kenya.
- On the operability side, it’s a bit labor intensive, and a bit complicated at times. We’ve had issues with: Foreign matter content Germination rates (sub-30% in some cases) Scale seed sourcing – roughly a metric ton of seed
- In addition to the core program we are running a number of trials both on improvements to grevillea planting practices and in exploring new trees like calliandra and sesbania. On grevillea: Socketing trials as opposed to bag planting – survival rates seem to improve Transplant timing trials Planting medium trials Trying to ultimately improve survival rates. Legume fodder trees like calliandra and sesbania are being trialed as part of our dairy cow package as a feed. We view this as the most natural entry point in our program for these trees.
- We’ve always had an interest in environmentally friendly farming practices and soil fertility management, but we have doubled down on this focus in the past year, looking to: Better understand the soils and growing conditions within which our farmers work by taking thousands of samples Trial custom blended fertilizer tailored to nutrient deficiencies found in a particular area Distribute lime to farmers with acidic soils Increase inclusion of legumes in OAF farming systems including both field crops and trees
- It’s our goal to share what we’ve learned from a wide range of experiences and work. We’ve recently launched a component of our website called One Acre Fund Insights. It’s an online library containing write ups on: Agriculture innovations – basically trial reports including methods, results, interpretations, and next steps Farm finance – an overview of our microfinance work Social enterprise – overviews of our approach to operations Agriculture policy – our involvement in policy work Failures – lessons learned from failed initiatives and pilot launches Annual reports – general organizational overviews and impact reports Please check it out and let us – or me – know what you think. We’ll be uploading more content over the next few months.