New approach to evaluating agricultural development programs.

New approach to evaluating agricultural development programs. A new research has shown that involving locals in figuring out how to improve their farming and fishing methods provides more lasting and widespread benefits than just introducing new technologies or methods. As the old saying goes, teaching someone to fish is far more helpful than just giving them a fish. Now, research from WorldFish and MIT takes that adage a step further: Better yet, the study found, is working with the fishermen to help develop better fishing methods. The findings are described in the journal Agricultural Systems, shows that over the last few decades has shown that bringing about improvements in agricultural systems is a highly complex challenge, with many interrelationships and feedbacks determining how well new methods and devices take hold or provide a real improvement. Yet government agencies as well as research and nonprofit organizations still mostly evaluate the success of their programs using simple metrics that overlook much of this complexity. more