IDH aims to select a long-term partner that collects primary data on smallholder farm economics, livelihoods and households.

In 2019, IDH contracted the Akvo foundation, an international M&E company, for the design and execution of a primary farmer data collection tool that has been integrated into the SDM methodology. As part of this assignment, IDH has developed a standardized methodology, which can be used for a wide range of countries, companies and crops. The standardized nature of this methodology allows for baseline data collection, cross-case comparison and operational efficiency.

The output of the data collection is used twofold:

— farmer profiles providing companies and Farmfit with a sound understanding of the SDM clients, their households and their service need, and

— primary data to enable net income / profit and loss calculations for each farmer profile, yielding an income baseline for TA and the starting point of our impact potential calculations.

1. Execution of approximately 40+ data collection a year, using a time and cost-efficient approach that should not take longer than 4-6 weeks from planning to the delivery of the cleaned data per company as per the proposed format. This can also include data collection for impact research.

2. Support in the continuous improvements of the methodology and approach, working closely together with Farmfit Intelligence and IDH Learning and Innovation team ensure that collected data can support insights creation but also the monitoring and evaluation of innovation projects. This may include some design elements for collecting impact measurement data.

3. Support on data infrastructure developed, including but not limited to the development of a database for farm-level data, quality control processes and data insertion.

4. Ad-hoc support for data cleaning, data handling/storage and analyses for aggregate insights, potentially coaching of IDH staff to ensure knowledge transfer to IDH.