Summary evaluation : four wheat production projects in four Near East and North Africa countries

Summary evaluation covers the period from inauguration of the first project in Tunisia in 1965 to completion of the last in Turkey in 1982 and is based on 3 A.I.D. impact evaluations, a Rockefeller Foundation study, and an 11/83 A.I.D. workshop. All four projects achieved some measure of success, although effects on wheat yield were clearly positive only in Turkey and Tunisia; limited yield increases may have occurred in Jordan and Morocco. Successful achievement of yield increases was not related to the type of technology transferred (in Turkey and Jordan, focus was on improved cultural practices; in Tunisia and Morocco, on high-yield varieties), but was correlated with length of assistance (10 years in Tunisia, nearly 15 in Turkey, 7 in Morocco, and 7 in Jordan - the latter including a 3-year hiatus), with rainfall levels, and with institution-building efforts. In both Turkey and Tunisia, great emphasis was put on training scientists and developing research and extension organizations capable of continuing work on wheat production technologies. In contrast, the Morocco project was terminated due to the government's inability to support institution-building activities, while in Jordan institutional development never really got underway and the host government wheat production unit disbanded when the project ended. Price policies influenced the projects' success in complex ways. It appears that price incentives can increase yields as long as farmers have the technological capacity to respond and that there must be an institutional structure (in the broadest sense - providing research, information, inputs, market accessibility, etc.) which can support a production response to favorable prices. Farmer adoption of technology was strongly related to the risks thereof, which was related in turn to rainfall variability. Also, adoption might have been better had the projects: (1) not neglected crop-livestock relationships (e.g., the value of weeds and wheat straw as animal feed); and (2) taken into account external changes - in labor costs and land tenure - affecting farmer resources.