The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has contracted IFPRI to conduct an endline survey and to analyze data to understand the impacts of the Sustaining Poverty Reduction through Agribusiness Development in South Shaanxi (SPRAD-SS) project in Shaanxi Province, China. The project strived to help farmers in remote areas organize production, improve their access to finance, and reach new markets with their products. The data collection is designed as a retrospective impact evaluation including both participants and non-participants, to attempt to understand project impacts against a counterfactual.

The endline survey should take place in communities that participated in the Sustaining Poverty Reduction through Agribusiness Development in South Shaanxi project (the “treatment group”) and similar communities in which the project did not take place (the “control group”).

Theory of Change. The development hypothesis of the SPRAD-SS is that value chains development can be effective for poverty reduction. The starting point of the theory of change is that market opportunities in agricultural products exist in the project area and these can be tapped by small farmers through partnerships with other value chain actors (mostly collectors and agribusiness processors). Public and private funding will be combined into long term profitable and equitable business plans jointly implemented by producers and agribusinesses. Project interventions will allow to correct failures such as insufficient access to knowledge, capital, natural resource and markets by small producers. In this way public-private partnerships will allow for a strengthened position and bargaining power of small producers in the value chains which in turn will generate increased and sustainable flow of income for these producers. On the other hand, the theory of change linking public infrastructure and services is as follows: improved food safety systems as well as cleaner and climate-smart production will (i) attract higher-

income and larger client basis that are willing to pay a premium price for better and safer agricultural products; (ii) that will translate into higher sale value and income for enterprises and cooperatives supported by the project; (iii) improved benefit-sharing mechanisms within pro-poor public private partnerships will ensure higher portion of this increased income to project beneficiaries; and (iv) this will ensure more sustainable poverty reduction for beneficiaries.