Resilience Design Measurement Toolkit

The approach draws elements from agroecology, permaculture, conservation agriculture, climate-smart agriculture, bio-intensive methods, and ecosystem services, distilling some of these principles to make them more accessible to farmers and allowing farmers to understand their unique, holistic farm system. The RD approach identifies a suite of agricultural techniques from which to draw, and helps farmers select and adapt those best suited to the local context. It builds on strategies that development projects already use, making it easy to layer into existing programming. The overall goal of the RD approach is to design a site that improves soil health and water management, to develop a smallholder farm agro-ecosystem that is more resilient to environmental, social, and economic shocks and stresses. The toolkit offers tools for monitoring progress on farms and gathering data on soil health, production, income, and expenses at the farm level, as well as a number of participatory impact assessment (PIA) methods to assess their impact. The monitoring tools are designed to be easily used by field staff in their everyday work, not only for monitoring but also for learning, aiming to facilitate a dialogue between field agents and farmers to help improve farms and integrate feedback from the monitoring process. The indicators are developed from the overall goal and the five main aims of Resilience Design and their associated objectives. The five main aims are: Ecological, Energy-related, Economic, Nutritional, and Social. The indicators focus on improving soil and water health, increasing biodiversity, reducing erosion, increasing energy efficiency, reducing input costs, diversifying and intensifying production, increasing soil biology, increasing access to a diverse diet, improving critical nutrient uptake from the diet, strengthening the skill set, capacity, and confidence of smallholder farmers, and relationships between community and watershed actors. A set of output indicators and a set of outcome indicators are included. The output indicators focus mainly on the RD approach strategies and techniques, while the outcome indicators are drawn from the overall goal and five key aims of the RD approach. These outcome indicators include better soil health, food security, production and income, nutritional status, knowledge and skills, and household resilience, and reduced production costs and workload. The toolkit includes a set of measurement tools, including farm-level measurements, farm resilience assessment, farm production assessment, soil health assessment, and community-level measurements. The tools are designed to be easily used by field staff in their everyday work, and are intended to facilitate a dialogue between field agents and farmers to help improve farms and integrate feedback from the monitoring process. The toolkit also includes a set of participatory impact assessment (PIA) methods to assess the impact of the RD approach. These methods include the Most Significant Change (MSC) stories, which capture stories of innovation, capacity building, and change. The MSC stories are intended to capture critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and the innovative changes and farm systems that are being created as a result of them. The toolkit is underpinned by a participatory, gender-sensitive, and inclusive approach. The farmer is seen as an expert on their particular piece of land and their particular context, and the important role that women play in agriculture, family economics, and as providers of nutrition for the family is recognized. The toolkit is intended to be used by field staff in their everyday work, and is designed to facilitate a dialogue between field agents and farmers to help improve farms and integrate feedback from the monitoring process.