Impact Evaluation Of The Home Grown School Feeding And Conservation Agriculture Scale Up Programmes In Zambia

This impact evaluation report quantifies the impacts of Zambia’s Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme – one of the country’s biggest social protection programmes – and the Conservation Agriculture Scale Up (CASU) project, both alone and in combination with each other. The report looks at how the programmes affected farm production and other livelihoods, the food security situation of the household and of school-going children and the educational outcomes of the latter. The report concludes that each programme or programme component considered in isolation meets their strictly defined objectives, but their combination leads to unintended conflicting influence on certain outcomes, thus highlighting the need for increased coherence between programmes. The household and community surveys for the evaluation of the programmes took place between October 2017 and January 2018. The total sample size is 3 636 households and a total of 72 community interviews were also conducted.

The aim of this study is to explore the distributional impacts on poverty and income of two programmes in Zambia, the Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme and the Conservation Agriculture Scale-Up (CASU) project, complementing the impact evaluation findings by Prifti & Grinspun (2019). These programmes target different parts of the population but are partly overlapping; they aim to influence poverty and food security through different channels. In the World Food Programme (WFP)’s HGSF modality, school feeding or provision of free meals for schoolchildren is complemented with procurement of food used for the meals from local smallholders. The purchase scheme aims to provide market access for smallholders, hence improving income stability and incentives to invest, ultimately increasing their productivity and reducing poverty. The objectives of school meals alone are improvement in schoolchildren’s nutrition as well as improvement in school attendance and hence human capital accumulation. Conservation agriculture (CA) consists of production methods that reduce farmers’ vulnerability to climate risks and improve productivity. The CASU programme promoted the use of such methods among smallholders through training and demonstration and provision of inputs, aiming for adoption of more sustainable farming which increases farm productivity in the long run.

This in-depth qualitative study in Zambia is integral to a mixed method impact evaluation of the Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) and the Conservation Agriculture Scale Up (CASU) programmes. Zambia’s HGSF (launched in 2011, and institutionalized in 2012, by the Government of Zambia in collaboration with the World Food Programme, WFP) provides nutritious cooked meals to almost one million schoolchildren and WFP’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) programme procures the commodities that make up the school meals provided by HGSF. P4P aims to improve livelihoods and address food insecurity by expanding local market opportunities for smallholder farmers in rural areas. The CASU programme (implemented between 2013 and late 2017 by FAO) aimed to provide solutions to declining crop production among small- and medium-scale farmers, strengthen partnership and networking between the Zambian government and cooperating partners, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the private sector, and reduce hunger, improve food security and income by increasing crop production, diversification and productivity. The aim of the qualitative study is to contextualise the findings of a quantitative impact evaluation conducted between October 2017 and January 2018, and deepen understanding of how and why specific findings and impacts transpired.

This publication seeks to support practitioners by providing methodological guidelines for conducting rigorous impact assessments of Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programmes. It presents an overview of the main technical issues to be addressed depending on the characteristics of the context and of the intervention itself. While these guidelines are mainly designed for monitoring and evaluation officers working for United Nations agencies, local governments or non-governmental organizations, its contents can be of interest to a wider audience of policymakers, researchers and practitioners interested in multi-sectoral, complex programmes linking agriculture and nutrition.

Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programmes have seen a considerable growth around the world in recognition of their crucial role as boosters of children's health and educational outcomes, as well as of countries' overall growth potential through stimulating economic activities and developing markets through local procurement. School feeding programmes have been implemented in Ethiopia for 20 years. The scope of this report is to present the results of a 2019 baseline study of a HGSF programme implemented by the Government of Ethiopia. The impact evaluation, whose results are presented in this publication, was designed to capture the impacts of the HGSF programme on farm production, food security and schooling. The evalutation is based on a post-test-only, non-equivalent control group design, and on two rounds of data collection: the first took place in June – July 2019 at the end of the school year, while the second was planned forthe same period in 2020, but did not materialize owing to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Sustainable Public Food Procurement (PFP) represents a key game changer for food systems transformation. It can influence both food consumption and food production patterns. It can deliver multiple social, economic and environmental benefits towards sustainable food systems for healthy diets. This publication aims to contribute to the improved understanding, dissemination and use of PFP as a development tool in particular in the case of school meals programmes. In this Volume 2, researchers, policymakers and development partners can find extensive evidence of the instruments, enablers and barriers for PFP implementation. It also provides case studies with local, regional and national experiences from Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America. Volume 1 of this publication, available at https://doi.org/10.4060/cb7960en, presents further analysis on how PFP can be used as a development tool and deliver multiple benefits for multiple beneficiaries. It argues that PFP can provide a market for local and smallholder farmers, promote the conservation and sustainable use of agrobiodiversity, and improve the nutrition and health of children and communities.

The School food and nutrition - Global action plan seeks to consolidate and guide FAO’s synergistic efforts, setting out priority and concrete outputs to be achieved by 2026. Key activities are presented in the plan and organized according to the following action areas: 1. promote the uptake of and investment in holistic approaches to school food and nutrition (SFN); 2. enhance capacities to design, implement and monitor effective SFN interventions; 3. strengthen policy and legal frameworks that enable SFN implementation; and 4. mobilize resources for ensuring regular and better support to countries. These have been prioritized based on identified gaps and needs, and considering the Organization’s technical competence and organizational comparative advantage. Such activities are meant to be adapted, contextualized and implemented according to regional and national priorities. This publication is the result of a collective effort, and includes contributions from relevant technical units of FAO across global, regional and country levels. The development of this plan follows the publication and dissemination of the Organization’s School Food and Nutrition Framework, and provides the implementation roadmap to attain its expected results.

This catalogue aims to improve the dissemination and outreach of FAO’s knowledge products and overall publishing programme. By providing information on its key publications in every area of FAO’s work, and catering to a range of audiences, it thereby contributes to all organizational outcomes. From statistical analysis to specialized manuals to children’s books, FAO publications cater to a diverse range of audiences. This catalogue presents a selection of FAO’s main publications, produced in 2021 or earlier, ranging from its global reports and general interest publications to numerous specialized titles. In addition to the major themes of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, it also includes thematic sections on climate change, economic and social development, and food safety and nutrition.