How Can Enabling Environment Reform Facilitate Agricultural Sector Growth?

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In order to advance food security objectives, we must first understand how programs can and should effectively address legal, regulatory and institutional constraints to agricultural sector growth.

Join us for this month's Ag Sector Council Webinar, where we will feature two Feed the Future program evaluations and their recent reviews of enabling environment reform activities. Listen and learn from our specialists, as they recollect five years of Feed the Future results and discuss how to apply what was learned to the new Global Food Security Strategy.

About the reviews:

The Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security project conducted a review of investments in enabling environment reform across seven bilateral Missions, five regional Missions and the Bureau for Food Security. This comprehensive analysis evaluated program design approaches, key methods of engagement and priority policy areas across more than 240 projects to better understand what has been effective, common challenges faced and lessons learned under the first five years of Feed the Future.

Over the past year, Feed the Future Knowledge Driven Agricultural Development Project has used qualitative research software to uniformly analyze and synthesize over 200 performance and impact evaluations and reporting from over 400 Feed the Future projects over the previous two years. With the overall goals of assessing the evidence base toward the Feed the Future learning agenda and answering key questions around future food security implementations questions, KDAD will discuss its findings relative to the Enabling Environment. 

Speakers

Meaghan Murphy

Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security Project

Meaghan Murphy works at Fintrac where she leads knowledge management activities under the Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security project. She has over 10 years of technical and program management experience working on international and domestic agriculture, community development and food security issues. She has overseas work experience in Honduras, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania, Liberia and Mongolia. Meaghan has an M.S. in Nutrition from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and an undergraduate degree from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Vermont. Meaghan is an alumnae of the Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellow program.

Justin Lawrence

Feed the Future Knowledge-Driven Agricultural Development Project

Justin Lawrence is a monitoring and evaluation professional with over eight years in both the nonprofit and private sector. He currently serves as Assessing and Learning Portfolio Manager for the Knowledge-Driven Agricultural Development Project (KDAD), which is finishing its third year. Prior to that, Justin served as an Assessing and Learning Specialist on the USAID Knowledge Driven Microenterprise Development (KDMD). KDMD was a flagship Knowledge Management project for USAID, with 14 participating USAID Offices developing and sharing content to hundreds of thousands of development practitioners. Justin holds a Masters in Public Administration from Syracuse University, with a concentration in Program Evaluation. When not pondering all things evaluation and learning, Justin is an avid tennis player and aspiring endurance athlete. He is also a trained public speaker, which he keeps in practice through officiating the odd wedding, having been ordained since 18.

Amy Chambers

Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security Project

Amy Chambers is a legal, regulatory and institutional reform specialist with a decade of experience promoting food security and agricultural growth. She is currently the Deputy Chief of Party for the Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security project, which was launched in late 2015 by USAID to address the policies, laws, institutions and regulatory factors affecting agriculture and food security outcomes. Through strategic support to USAID offices in Washington and rapidly-deployed technical teams to Feed the Future focused and aligned USAID Missions around the globe, the project provides technical analysis, advisory services and knowledge management to support the integration and implementation of enabling environment reform strategies into Feed the Future programs. Amy has conducted field work in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. She holds a J.D. and LL.M. in Taxation from New York University School of Law and a B.A. in Philosophy from Rice University.

Gwen Varley

Feed the Future Knowledge-Driven Agricultural Development Project

Gwen Varley is a Qualitative Research Specialist for the Knowledge-Driven Agriculture Development (KDAD) Program, where she provides analysis of monitoring and evaluation data across Feed the Future activities. Prior to joining KDAD, Gwen worked as a consultant on gender and development in food security, nutrition and human rights for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). She has also contributed USAID programs in her work for Integrating Gender and Nutrition in Agricultural Extension Services (INGENAES), and as a Research Innovation Fellow for the USAID Global Development Lab. Gwen holds an M.S. in International Agricultural Development from the University of California, Davis, and a B.A. in Chinese from Grinnell College.

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