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Sector Results and Learning:

Agriculture and Irrigation

This Agriculture and Irrigation Sector Results and Learning page is a repository of evidence generated by all MCC-funded agriculture and irrigation interventions. To promote learning and inform future program design, this page captures monitoring data from key common indicators, showcases recent and relevant evaluations, includes all agency lessons from completed agriculture and irrigation evaluations to-date, and links to learning that has been aggregated across completed evaluations in the sector.

What Do We Invest In?

MCC has funded $1.8 billion in agriculture and irrigation interventions as of September 2024. These interventions fall into the following categories: agriculture infrastructure; producer organizational development; policy and regulatory reform and systems strengthening; market development; and agriculture finance and investment.

  • Agriculture Finance and Investment

    These programs address constraints to access to finance and investment in the agricultural economy.

  • Agriculture Infrastructure

    These programs address constraints in the agricultural economy through infrastructure investments such as irrigation, rural roads, and warehouses.

  • Market Development

    These programs address constraints in agriculture and food market systems such as market linkages and value chain development while crowding in the private sector.

  • Policy and Regulatory Reform and Systems Strengthening

    These programs address reforms and supporting institutions in the policy and regulatory environment of the agricultural economy.

  • Producer Organizational Development

    These programs address constraints in agriculture-related organizations such as water user associations and farmer cooperatives.

What Have We Completed So Far?

MCC and its country partners develop and tailor Monitoring and Evaluation Plans for each program and country context. Within these country-specific plans, MCC uses common indicators to standardize measurement and reporting within certain sectors. See below for a subset of common indicators that summarize implementation achievements across all MCC agriculture and irrigation investments as of September 2024.

  • 450,164

    farmers trained

  • 127,112

    farmers who have applied improved practices as a result of training

  • 1,016

    enterprises that have applied improved techniques

  • 206,450

    hectares under improved irrigation

What Have We Achieved?

MCC commissions independent evaluations, conducted by third-party evaluators, for every project it funds. These evaluations hold MCC and country partners accountable for the achievement of intended results and also produce evidence and learning to inform future programming. They investigate the quality of project implementation, the achievement of the project objective and other targeted outcomes, and the cost-effectiveness of the project. The graphs below summarize the composition and status of MCC’s independent evaluations in the agriculture and irrigation sector as of November 2024. Read on to see highlights of published interim and final evaluations. Follow the evaluation links to see the status of all planned, ongoing, and completed evaluations in the sector and to access the reports, summaries, survey materials, and data sets.

Highlighted Evaluations

What Have We Learned from Our Results?

To link the evidence from the independent evaluations with MCC practice, project staff produce an MCC Learning document at the close of each interim and final evaluation to capture practical lessons for programming and evaluation. Use the filters below to find lessons relevant to your evidence needs.

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How Have We Aggregated Learning Across the Sector?

MCC has developed a Principles into Practice paper using evidence from completed independent evaluations in the agriculture and irrigation sector – Principles into Practice: Impact Evaluations of Agriculture Projects. The Principles into Practice series offers a frank look at what it takes to make the principles MCC considers essential for development operational in the projects in which MCC invests. The learning captured in this paper informs MCC’s ongoing efforts to refine and strengthen its own model and development practice in the agriculture and irrigation sector. MCC hopes this paper will also allow others to benefit from, and build upon, MCC’s lessons.

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