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Appendix H. Final Technical Report Grant Number 09-1100
A Conceptual Framework for
On-Farm Conservation Projects
Fact Sheet
On-farm conservation of crop diversity refers to underpin this diversity) as well as of livelihood
the maintenance of crop evolution in farmers’ outcomes that create benefits for farmers. The
fields, farms and landscapes that generates factors and interrelationships involved in onnew potentially useful
genetic variation, thus
contributing to the
Crop diversity: The number of distinct populations of a particular crop species
capacity of agricultural
recognized and managed by a farming household or community.
and food systems to
Project intervention: activities carried out by a project that provide farmers with
adapt to change. It
innovations such as new technologies, development of capacities and skills or new
depends on the active
forms of organization aimed at changing the way they access, manage, use, perceive,
participation of farmers
consume and/or market crop diversity.
and the existence of
incentives to do so. A
Outputs: The products or processes produced by a project or intervention
large amount of crop
Outcome: The result of a complex process. In the context of a project, refers to the
diversity and associated
result of the use or adoption of project outputs.
evolutionary processes
are still retained in
Incentive: An encouragement -- whether moral, persuasive or monetary -- that
developing countries by
motivates an individual to perform an action
smallholder
farmers,
particularly in centers of
Livelihood benefits: The private benefits that farmers and their households derive
crop domestication and
directly from crop diversity maintain in their agricultural system (e.g. food security,
diversity. Maintaining
nutrition, income, safety net, cultural identity)
crop diversity on-farm,
Societal benefits: The public benefits that society derives from the biodiversity
however, can entail
maintained in an agricultural system (e.g. ecosystem services, adaptive evolutionary
important costs to
processes)
farmers, often in the
face of strong incentives
Evolutionary services refer to all of the uses or services to humans produced from
to
abandon
this
evolutionary processes that contribute to maintain options open to benefit from
diversity.
For
this
biodiversity
reason there is a need
for interventions to
farm conservation are complex, so that a
support farmers in maintaining this diversity.
conceptual scheme that brings them together
In the last 20 years many projects to support on in a simplified but coherent fashion can be
farm conservation have been implemented extremely useful for scientists, donors, policy
worldwide. However there has been very little makers and practitioners involved in on-farm
systematic assessment of the extent to which projects to design and assess the success of
these projects have actually produced on-farm their projects in a more systematic way.
conservation outcomes in terms of maintaining
or increasing crop diversity on-farm (including The McKnight Foundation-funded project
farmers' knowledge and practices that entitled Assessing the Success of On-Farm
Conservation Projects in Delivering Conservation