Workshop Overview

Over 60 representatives from companies, NGOs, standards, backbone organizations and development organizations gathered at Nestlé in Vevey, Switzerland in early March to discuss smallholder performance measurement. Particpants brought their experiences and challenges of learning from measurement and moving from Data to Action. Themes included:

• Approaches to measuring and impacting nutrition security in value chains
• How to use farm economic models to understand projected impact of different interventions on productivity and farmer income
• What’s the state of the art in the difficult “core” measurement issues – practice adoption and income measurement?
• How can performance be measured at a sector level?
• Role of backbone organizations in managing data and facilitating learning

This evolving group has been meeting virtually and in person once a year as a community of practice (CoP) since 2012. We share challenges and best practices on core measurement questions and learn from one another in an informal, pre-competitive space. Ultimately, the CoP aims to understand how to use data to inform strategy and define action on the ground. More detail on the CoP can be found here.

The workshop, kicked off by Nestle’s Duncan Pollard, began by identifying the questions each organization is grappling with (see major themes at right) and the tools and approaches that are helping them to tackle the complex problems in an efficient and effective way (see Tools and Resources Annex for specific links).

Below you will find descriptions of topics discussed and, where available, session presentations. If you have questions or want to follow up on any of these topics, please contact Kealy Sloan.