Guangxi Integrated Agricultural Development Project, IFAD Impact Assessment Surveys 2017 (China)

Abstract

Improving market access of smallholder farmers in the developing world is considered an important approach to moving them out of poverty and increasing their economic mobility. In China, rural poverty has declined at a phenomenal speed within just two decades, and much of this success story is attributable to rapid income growth in rural areas. Thus, having a good understanding of how development efforts in rural China may help alleviate poverty and improving economic mobility is of particular interest for policy, as they are instrumental in informing future project design and scaling-up of success stories to other regions in China as well as to other countries.

The Guangxi Integrated Agricultural Development Project (GIADP) is an example of a development effort aimed at increasing rural household income in China through three project components: community infrastructure development, agricultural production and marketing support, and rural environmental improvement. GIADP is a multi-component rural development project which took place in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (GZAR) of the People's Republic of China. The project was approved by the Executive Board of IFAD in December 2011, and entered into effect in January 2012. The project completed its interventions and activities in March 2017. The main focus of the project is to foster rural development and poverty reduction. The project consists of three components: (1) community infrastructure (rural road and irrigation infrastructures), (2) agricultural production and marketing support, and (3) rural environmental improvement.

Through the activities implemented during the course of GIADP, project beneficiaries are expected to increase their revenue from agricultural production through innovative approaches. Thus, the focus of this impact assessment is to investigate the extent to which the project may help its beneficiaries increase their revenue from production and other related outcomes. Further, we are interested in impact heterogeneity, in other words, assessing the extent to which the different types of interventions implemented by GIADP generated an impact.

For more information, please, click on the following link <https://www.ifad.org/en/web/knowledge/-/publication/impact-assessment-g…;.