Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics Food Security Group

IDWP 154. Mywish K. Maredia, Murari Suvedi, Raul Pitoro, and Raju Ghimire. 2017. Impact Evaluation of the Feed the Future Cambodia Helping Address Rural Vulnerabilities and Ecosystem Stability (HARVEST) Project 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
The Cambodia Helping Address Rural Vulnerabilities and Ecosystem Stability (Cambodia HARVEST) was a five-year (December 2010-June 2016) USAID Feed the Future (FTF) initiative implemented in selected districts across four provinces of Cambodia – Battambang, Pursat, Siem Reap, and Kampong Thom. HARVEST program interventions focused on increasing incomes to influence nutrition outcomes. This was achieved through an approach that integrated activities from a range of sectors—agriculture, fisheries, forestry, nutrition and more—to help families in rural areas grow, purchase, and prepare more nutritious foods. Cambodia HARVEST was rolled out in phases over the 5 1/2-year period, which ended in June 2016. Over that time, the project’s strategy evolved as activities were scaled up, but the overall approach remained guided by the principles of linking agriculture and nutrition to achieve some of the overarching development goals of reducing poverty and malnutrition.

To assess whether this approach of linking agriculture and nutrition through a comprehensive development project such as Cambodia HARVEST is effective, USAID/Cambodia funded Michigan State University (MSU) to conduct an independent and rigorous impact evaluation of the Cambodia HARVEST as part of its overall FTF monitoring and evaluation strategy. To this effect, baseline and endline data were collected in 2012 and 2016, respectively. This report presents the results of the endline survey conducted in HARVEST targeted villages to assess whether and by how much project outcome status of some key FTF indicators along the impact pathway improved for Cambodia HARVEST clients compared with the baseline. It also presents the results of the impact evaluation of project interventions using rigorous methodologies that take into account counterfactuals and selection bias issues to assess whether the observed changes in outcome status of client households can be attributed to Cambodia HARVEST.