Agriculture Grants in Georgia
Evaluation Description
The Agribusiness Development Activity is part of the five-year Compact between the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Republic of Georgia. The project, which is implemented by Citizens Network for Foreign Affairs (CNFA) on behalf of the Government of Georgia, awards grants to small farmers (known as Primary Producers), farm service centers that serve local communities and value-adding enterprises focused on collection, storage, distribution, processing, and packaging. Grants are distributed among the fruit and vegetable, dairy, livestock, fish production, and honey sectors, as well as among various kinds of processing operations.
The impact evaluation will examine the project’s effects on rural income and job creation among Primary Producers through an experimental design that includes an ongoing randomized selection process for grantees from among qualified applications. Three times a year, qualified farmers are randomly chosen to receive Primary Producer grants. Those who were selected in the first random drawing received grants right away; those whose names were not drawn will receive grants later in the Compact term, to allow time for comparison. Farm service center and value-adding enterprise grantees will be evaluated by a Propensity Score Matching methodology. Grant recipients will be matched to similar enterprises for comparison, using information drawn from a variety of data sources. In both studies, the income and revenue levels of the grant recipients and those individuals who receive jobs created by the project will be compared to their various control groups to estimate the impact. For more information see the Georgia Country Page.
Data Collection
- Administrative data collected by CNFA: The evaluation will draw on baseline data provided in grant applications, as well as quarterly ongoing data collection on the performance of grantees.
- Integrated Household Survey (IHS) conducted by the Georgia Department of Statistics: The national household survey will be expanded to provide community-level data that will support assessment of income and employment impacts on grantees.
- Special surveys: An ad-hoc beneficiary survey will provide a closer look at grantee performance to supplement data collected by CNFA and also will produce data on the control groups selected through the randomization and matching methodologies. Additional data on limited, key comparison groups will also be collected to provide further supplemental information.
Timeline
