Benefits to smallholders? Evaluating the World Food Programme's Purchase for Progress pilot

The United Nations World Food Programme's (WFP's) Purchase for Progress (P4P), a multi-year, multi-country pilot, sought to improve smallholder farmer wellbeing through a combination of food purchases from farmer organizations and supply-side interventions. We examine the impacts of P4P on smallholder farmers in Tanzania, using panel data on members of participating and comparison farmer organizations. P4P targeted participants based on pre-existing warehouses locations. To account for possible selection on observables, we use propensity score matching, limiting the sample to participating farmers and their matches, and then compute conditional difference-in-differences. While participating small farmers increase their commercial farming activity relative to comparison farmers, we do not find evidence of increased income, increased food consumption scores or increased crop value. We discuss possible factors contributing to these findings, including WFP's diverse objectives and the targeting of farmer organizations rather than smallholders.