OC-13.4: Share of farmers that perceive a change in soil attributes due to adoption of the improved technologies

Owned by Enrico Bonaiuti
May 05, 2020
2 min read

Definition: This indicator measures the percentage of farmers whose likert-scale score on soil attributes is atleast 3 out of 5. The attributes covered by this indicator include: soil salinity, soil fertility, and soil depth

Unit of Measure: Percentage

Disaggregated by: Soil attribute (soil salinity, soil fertility, and soil depth), geographic location (national, sub-national)

Method of Calculation:
Step 1: Elicit farmers' perceptions of the soil attributes (soil salinity, soil fertility, and soil depth) on a 5-level likert scale, where 1 is the lowest score and 5 is the highest score;
Step 2: Compute the percentage of farmers whose likert score is atleast 3.
Step 3: Compute the change in soil quality perception as per the equation below
Change in soil quality perceptioni=Perceptionitn-PerceptionitoPerceptionito×100
Perceptionto denotes percent of farmer that perceived the quality of the soil to be above average (likert score of 3 and above) in the first reporting period (e.g baseline) and Perceptiontn denotes percent of farmers that perceive the quality of the soil to be above average (likert score of 3 or above) in subsequent reporting periods (e.g mid-term, end-term).

Data sources: Farm households

Data collection method: Farm household surveys

Data collection and reporting responsibility: Program leader, project leader, project M&E focal point person

Data Collection and Reporting Frequency: Annual, bi-annual, baseline, mid-term, end-term.

Evidence required:
For internal evaluation or research studies: Study protocol, data collection tools, dataset, report;
For external evaluation or research studies: Request for proposals (RFP) document, inception report, final report, dataset

Rationale: Soil fertility and health are key to the sustainability of crop and animal production systems. This indicator will measure heuristic impressions of soil fertility and health and will directly contribute to agenda 5.5 of the ICARDA Strategic Plan 2017-2026.

Comments and limitations: The use of a cut-off point on the likert-scale to categorize farmers' perceptions creates a distortion, in that if a farmers' score changes from 4 to 5 between 2 reporting periods, this may not have an effect on the assessed 'perception'.