Commentary on ‘The Sorry State of M&E in Agriculture: Can People?centred Approaches Help?’

In their article, Haddad, Lindstrom and Pinto highlight some of the most critical issues facing monitoring and evaluation today, not only in agriculture but across many fields of endeavour. Their rationale and call for better M&E, ‘people?centred M&E’ and ensuring that the multiple benefits of M&E are captured in the increasingly important agricultural sector is convincing, welcome and timely. However, these approaches will resolve only some of the issues that need to be addressed if M&E is to make a real difference in agriculture for development. A concerted effort with a stronger focus on larger systems within and beyond agriculture, novel practices and innovation in M&E will be needed. Will the M&E profession – especially in developing countries – rise to the challenge?