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Lesson
The move of smallholder farmers toward commercialization requires tailored infrastructure. The NRSLLDP, through the VIF, supported CDD-related infrastructure (such as village meeting halls) at the provincial, district, and local levels. Livestock development and commercialization endeavors, on the other hand, will require new infrastructure to address impediments such as access to water, animal shelters, medicinal supplies, cold-chain, access roads, and market infrastructure.

Project Number: 35297-013
Project Name: Northern Region Sustainable Livelihoods Through Livestock Development Project (A Joint Evaluation)
Report Date:
Lesson
Sustainable access to savings and credit is essential. In the future, savings and credit instruments should be designed around actual farmer needs in terms of timing, amount, duration and repayment and collateral requirements. A key decision for IFAD, ADB, and the government will be to agree on a partner—for example, the Bank of Laos—to implement the rural finance component of the NSLCP transparently and professionally.

Project Number: 35297-013
Project Name: Northern Region Sustainable Livelihoods Through Livestock Development Project (A Joint Evaluation)
Report Date:
Lesson
LPGs can be a conduit to share experiences, exchange knowledge, and gain access to inputs and improved market opportunities and prices. Unfortunately, the NRSLLDP was rather short-sighted and did not seek to develop groups to access or provide benefits to farmers throughout the production chain (from inputs, to husbandry, to selling). The project also dropped the access-to-market component.

Project Number: 35297-013
Project Name: Northern Region Sustainable Livelihoods Through Livestock Development Project (A Joint Evaluation)
Report Date:
Lesson
The transition to commercial agriculture requires extensive training and empowerment of smallholder farmers. The NRSLLDP aimed to provide farmers with animals to be integrated into their semi-subsistence livelihoods. These additional animals were stores of wealth that were sold occasionally to smooth consumption (e.g., school fees) or support other investments (e.g., motorbikes). With a commercialized approach, the focus is on maximizing a stream of income over a sustained period. This will require substantial changes in the production, marketing, selling, and reinvesting cycle.

Project Number: 35297-013
Project Name: Northern Region Sustainable Livelihoods Through Livestock Development Project (A Joint Evaluation)
Report Date:
Lesson
The community-driven development approach is effective. Although it seems self-evident, this fundamental lesson is often overlooked and needs to be reiterated. Community involvement in planning and responsibility for O&M is a practical and cost-effective way of managing such small-scale systems. The government-enabled community ownership and capacity building approach employed by the project will be useful in other efforts to scale up agricultural development, for example in improving rural health, water supply and sanitation, and education.

Project Number: 34188-013
Project Name: Northern Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Sustainable O&M and water provision are crucial. Sustainable O&M that guarantees water provision is an incentive for farmers to remain members of WUAs. Farmers tend to withdraw from WUAs if their fields do not receive adequate water flows. Without water delivery to their fields, there was no incentive for farmers to work on land conversion and therefore some refused to invest their resources in converting undeveloped land to paddy fields, which would have increased the irrigated area under the project.

Project Number: 34188-013
Project Name: Northern Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Irrigation infrastructure should be built to last. Frequent damage to irrigation facilities caused by flooding and landslides is a big threat to the sustainability of infrastructure improvements. Considering the poor watershed management in the areas surrounding subprojects and incompatible land uses (e.g., hilly land corn farming above the irrigated rice fields), the construction of irrigation infrastructure needs to improve. Preventive and protective measures need to be taken to guard against recurring intense rainfalls and extreme weather events.

Project Number: 34188-013
Project Name: Northern Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date: