Jordan Valley agricultural service project

The evaluation covered the period 3/84-7/85 and was based on document review, site visits, and interviews with personnel from the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), Washington State University, USAID/J, and various Government of Jordan (GOJ) and other related agencies. The project has helped increase crop productivity in the Jordan Valley and strengthen the research skills of Jordanian staff members, who were generally found competent; however, while the quality of expatriate staff has been good, the citrus horticulturist and the soil scientist were scheduled too late in the project to have maximum impact, and the elimination of the vegetable horticulturist has adversely affected development of the horticultural research program. The establishment and equipping of four research sites, including several laboratory facilities at the Deir Alla Station, has gone well. However, overall progress is less than expected. Problems involving administrative arrangements at the research center have reduced the center"s viability and hampered the effectiveness of the project"s research and extension programs, farm demonstrations, and the technical training of Jordanian staff. Also, certain key assumptions on which achievements were to be based proved incorrect. For example, incentives for attracting and retaining qualified leaders and scientific personnel were not developed as planned. These factors have resulted in a high staff turnover, frequent changing of project directors, and chronic and severe implementation and management problems which have hindered attainment of the project"s institution-building goal, although significant contributions to institutional capacity have been made. While the GOJ is now making efforts to remedy the project"s problems, these efforts have come to late to figure significantly in achieving final outputs. The project"s most noteworthy achievement has been its research on the control of the spherical mealy bug on citrus through biological methods. The main lessons to be learned from this project are that: (1) building and strengthening institutional capacity takes time, patience, and continuous effort; (2) projects requiring installation of facilities should be designed to allow ample time for installation before the main technical staff arrives; and (3) administrative problems can easily overshadow substantive project achievements.