There is potential for synergies between social protection and agriculture policies to reduce poverty. Coordinating cash transfers with agricultural assistance can help households address basic needs and invest in economic activities. Evidence shows combined interventions have positive impacts on investment, food security, and productivity. However, political and institutional challenges like lack of cross-sector coordination must be addressed. Aligning targeting, avoiding unintended price impacts, and building stakeholder consensus are keys to realizing coherence between social protection and agriculture. While combined programs cannot solve poverty alone, coherence can help mitigate rural out-migration by improving income opportunities.

1. Synergies between
Social Protection and
Agriculture
Silvio Daidone
Food and Agriculture Organization

2. Background
• Around the world, 736 extreme poor and 815M hungry
• Concentrated in SSA, living in rural areas, their livelihoods
depending largely on agriculture
• Coordinated and coherent agricultural and social protection
policies and programs can break the intergenerational
transmission of poverty
• Importance of this specific intersectoral coordination reflected
in several African policy initiatives and declarations (eg:
CAADP, Malabo)
• Research carried out by FAO and partners shows social
protection can have social and productive impacts among the
poorest. This needs to be sustained.

3. What is coherence?
“A systematic promotion of complementary and consistent policies
and programs across sectors, thereby creating synergies to combat
rural poverty and food insecurity more effectively”
• Coherence to avoid/minimize conflicting interactions between
policies/programs
• Coherence can be pursued horizontally (across
ministries/agencies) or vertically (across different levels of
government)
• Coherence as a result of chance or through deliberate coordinated
actions between stakeholders

4. Example of coherence: the
Cash+ approach
• Social protection interventions providing regular transfers in
combination with additional components or linkages that seek to
augment income effects
• The “plus” components can be integrated into the cash transfer
program or can be externally linked
• Cash component allows beneficiaries: 1) to address their
immediate basic needs and 2) to invest in economic activities
• The “plus” components (productive assistance and training)
protect, restore, and develop livelihoods.
• Cash+ as part of a broader long-term vision of economic
inclusion strategies

5. Impact pathways of social protection
and agricultural interventions
• (Under a model of agricultural households living in a
context of missing or incomplete markets)
1. Alleviation of credit, savings, and liquidity
constraints
2. Certainty and risk
3. Increased access to technology, knowledge,
inputs, and factors of production
4. Food and nutrition security and labor productivity

6. Social protection agriculture: Existing
evidence - Veras-Soares et al. (2016)
To gather and systematize evidence on the value
added of coordinated and coherent social protection
and agricultural interventions
To assess whether it is possible to identify which
type of combined interventions have had the greatest
impacts within different contexts
To contribute to defining a future evidence-
generation agenda by identifying critical knowledge
gaps

7. Typology of combined interventions
as per the literature survey
• Sustainable Livelihood Programs (SLP): single programs with
multiple components including both agricultural and social
protection interventions;
• Complementary Programs (CP): programs from the two sectors
that are designed and/or implemented in a somewhat coordinated
and/or aligned manner;
• Overlapping programmes (OP): programs from both sectors without
alignment or coordination which beneficiaries can partially overlap
at the individual/household and/or at geographical/community level
only in an unplanned manner

8. Evaluation papers by region: SSA
Country PROGRAMMES: Papers and/or Reports N %
AFRICA 9 24
Ethiopia
Graduation into Sustainable Livelihood (SLP): Banerjee et al. (2015);
PSNP + OFSP/HASP (CP): Gilligan et al. (2009); Hoddinott et al.
(2012); Nega et al. (2010)
4 11
Uganda Women's Income Generation Support – WINGS (SLP): Blattman et al.
(2014)
1 2.7
Ghana Graduation into Sustainable Livelihood (SLP): Banerjee et al. (2015)
1 2.7
Lesotho
Child Grant Programme and Linking Food Security and Social
Protection (CP): Dewbre et al. (2015) 1 2.7
Malawi
Social Cash Transfer Programme and Farm Input Subsidy
Programme: Pace et al. (2016)
1 2.7
Burkina Faso
Local Education Assistance and Procurement project (LEAP):
integrating local procurement into a longstanding school feeding
programme: Upton et al. (2012) 1 2.7

9. What does the evidence say on the
impacts of combining SP and AG?
• Mostly positive results on various domains
(investment in productive assets, financial
inclusion, food security)
• Long-term implications not clear (sustainability)
• Targeting the poorest still challenging

10. Political economy
• Intervening in the enabling environment to strengthen
coherence. Governments typically not organized to allow for
cross-sectoral collaboration
• Creating high-level political consensus:
1. Building coalitions of stakeholders
2. Generating and disseminating evidence on the impacts of
combined interventions for advocacy
3. Identifying champions
4. Leveraging regional and global commitments

11. Institutional capacity
• Institutional arrangements to facilitate coordination
across different government agencies:
1. ensuring representation of agriculture and social
protection sectors in relevant coordination
mechanisms
2. harmonizing coordination mechanisms
3. developing programming guidance
4. organizing adequate and appropriate financing

12. Coordinated targeting
• A conscious effort to select the beneficiaries of both types of
interventions in a way to increase the joint impact of both
programs
• Two different approaches:
1. SP and AG agencies using the same database or targeting
strategy with a view to reaching the same households and
individuals
2. Implement programs in the same geographic areas, without
necessarily targeting the same households

13. Aligning policies to avoid
unintended negative impacts
• Goal of raising agricultural productivity vs. the goal of
mitigating or reducing rural poverty
• Second-order effects cannot be ignored:
1. Input subsidies raising the market supply of food crops
(prices go down for producers not receiving the subsidy)
2. Cash transfers increase demand for food (food prices go
up for consumers not receiving the transfers)

14. Conclusions
• More efforts needed to improve coherence between AG and SP
interventions/policies
• Building coordination and coherence across SP and AG
programs from the political to the operational level can increase
efficiency and effectiveness
• These measures are not sufficient to trigger a rapid and
substantial change in households’ well-being, but…
• … they can certainly mitigate the most negative effects arising
from the widespread out-migration from rural areas that is
driven by a lack of employment and income-generating
opportunities

15. Thank you !!!
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