Bangladesh agricultural research project II : report of the 1985 external evaluation team

Annual evaluation covered the period 5/84-5/85 and was based on document review, site visits, and interviews with project personnel. The project has made some notable accomplishments over the past years. The ARS has developed several high-yielding varieties and cropping patterns which have been widely used by farmers and has studied the relation of these new technologies to traditional cropping systems. Research, extension, and farmer linkages have been developed through the cropping systems research (CSR) program, and plans are being made for incorporating non-crop activities into the field program for a full farming systems research (FSR) approach. Much progress has also been made towards decentralizing ARS activities, thus rendering regional research planning and execution more effective. The National Agricultural Research Plan (NARP) provides a good overview and ranking of research requirements. The Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) must work with the contractor, the International Agricultural Development Service (IADS), to convert the NARP into a precise guide which will allow BARC to review research institute plans and to carry out its role in reviewing contract research and annual development plan projects. Lack of operating funds for the national ARS has been a major problem, which USAID/B has temporarily relieved by supplying P.L. 480 Title II funds; however, a permanent solution is needed. Since the ARS concept is still considered valid, operating expenses for ongoing projects should be increased and USAID/B support continued until the ARS is fully functional. Several lessons have been learned. (1) Decentralization of control over donor resources and research and training at the regional and field levels is essential; without USAID/B and IADS pressure for decentralized control, policy changes would have been nil. (2) Greater efforts to obtain farmer feedback are needed. (3) Although FSR has worked for farmers, implementing it has not been easy, and it was not realistic of USAID/B to expect more than the CSR approach at this point. (4) CSR sites will yield even more if additional TA is provided at the researcher-farmer-extensionist interface level; increased support for CSR field officers is also needed. (5) More field research is needed on resource-poor farmers and those with little control over water management, pest control, planting time, seed selection, and grain storage. All 36 of the action decisions included have been or are being addressed, some of them in a proposed project extension.