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Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation
Summary of full report
Evaluation of the Agroforestry and Farm Forestry Program: An overview of all projects - stage 1 by Marcia Bauer and Jenny Gordon
May 2003RIRDC Publication No 03/041
This report forms Stage 1 of a two-part evaluation of RIRDC’s Agroforestry and Farm Forestry Program. The purpose of Stage 1 is to provide a record of all projects that have been completed or are being completed in the program. This record is useful in that it:
Program funding
The program has supported
157 projects with an expenditure by the Joint Venture on Agroforestry (JVAP)
of $16.98 million since 1990. Of this, $5.7 million has been provided by
RIRDC. This funding has been boosted by additional investment by other
research organisations of $18 million and industry contributions of $6.3
million.
Project classifications
Projects are classified
according to Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Australia’s (AFFA) Level
1 project classification system. The allocation of JVAP funds across project
Level 1 classifications is given in table 1.
It is clear that the lion
share of research and development (R&D) expenditure has been on production
aspects of agroforestry, with 40 per cent allocated to ‘Production — industry
competitiveness’ and 40 per cent to ‘Production — sustainable development’.
A relatively small share of expenditure (4 per cent) has been on ‘Markets’
and ‘Processing’ R&D.
Table 1 - Overview of portfolio funding
| AFFA Project Classification |
JVAP funding
|
Share of
total JVAP funding
|
|
$
|
%
|
|
| Production — industry competitiveness |
6 743 489
|
40
|
| Production — sustainable development |
6 770 514
|
40
|
| Industry training and development |
2 412 189
|
14
|
| Markets |
413 013
|
2
|
| Processing |
308 156
|
2
|
| Communication and technology transfer |
175 621
|
1
|
| Total |
16 935 112
|
100
|
Stage
of R&D
The report also classifies
projects according to the stage of R&D targeted by the project. Stage
1 represents basic or fundamental research. Stage 2 constitutes applied
R&D, while Stage 3 categorises those projects at the other end of the
research cycle, that are focused on industry development through communication
and extension of new information and innovations to potential users.
Table 2 summarises the allocation of funds across each of these stages. Historically, almost half of the Farm Forestry R&D budget has been allocated to projects that represent fundamental research. The other half of expenditure has been split equally between Stage 2 (applied) work and Stage 3 projects (communication and development aspects).
The mix of basic, applied and development work varies across the different AFFA classifications. For example, projects within ‘Markets’ and ‘Communication and Technology Transfer’ are all Stage 3 projects. By contrast, ‘Processing’ contains projects that are mainly characterised as Stage 1. The suite of projects within ‘Production — Industry Competitiveness’ are spread across all three stages.
Table 2 - Share of projects by value at different stages of the project cycle
| AFFA Project Classification |
|
|
|
|||
|
JVAP
|
Share
|
JVAP
|
Share
|
JVAP
|
Share
|
|
|
$
|
%
|
$
|
%
|
$
|
%
|
|
| Production — industry competitiveness |
2 242 795
|
33
|
2 138 515
|
32
|
2 362 179
|
35
|
| Production — sustainable development |
3 983 895
|
59
|
1 882 363
|
28
|
904 256
|
13
|
| Industry training and development |
841 626
|
33
|
985 881
|
39
|
702 812
|
28
|
| Markets |
987 00
|
24
|
112 003
|
27
|
202 310
|
49
|
| Processing |
250 006
|
81
|
58 150
|
19
|
0
|
0
|
| Communication and technology transfer |
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
175 621
|
100
|
| Total |
7 417 022
|
43
|
5 176 912
|
31
|
4 347 178
|
26
|
Initial
assessment
As part of this evaluation
project managers were asked to provide an initial assessment of the impact
of each project undertaken by the Farm Forestry Program. Results from this
survey are summarised in table 3. The results show that nearly half of
the R&D funds have been spent on projects considered as having a high
impact. The proportion of investment in low impact work has been fairly
small (7 per cent).
The reasons behind each project’s impact are varied and are discussed in the body of this report. At the time of writing, it was too early to assess the impact of some projects, and the outcome of other projects was not known.
| Project impact ranking |
JVAP funding
|
Share
|
|
$
|
%
|
|
| High |
7 987 648
|
47
|
| Medium-high |
755 209
|
4
|
| Medium |
2 748 164
|
16
|
| Low-medium |
196 820
|
1
|
| Low |
1 205 152
|
7
|
| Too early |
2 079 111
|
12
|
| Unknown |
2 003 007
|
12
|
| Total |
16 975 112
|
100
|
The assessments provide a first–pass guide to the likely impact of each project, but caution should be exercised as they were made by different people with different priors of what constitutes high, medium and low impact. Much of the value of such assessments lies in the process of making them, as it forces consideration of the impact of the project which depends not only on the success of the research but a host of other factors, such as adoption rates, that influence the magnitude of the impact or benefit.
Many projects have delivered outputs that constitute new information rather than definitive products. In some cases, it is not yet known what impacts will flow from this information — or how big the impact will be. This is because often there is a long time lag between the delivery of project outputs and any measurable change in economic activity. Similarly the social and environmental impacts can be slow to arise and difficult to attribute back to the R&D. This makes the assessment of the value a challenge for project managers, but it is the same challenge they face in assessing proposals. The information in this report and Stage 2 of the evaluation — the benefit cost analyses of a select number of projects — will be a useful base from which to assess future R&D proposals.
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