Assessing the Adoption, Economic, and Environmental Impacts of Brachiaria Grass Forage Cultivars

Project Overview

This project is funded is by CIAT (the International Center for Tropical Agriculture) through funding from the CGIAR’s Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA) to rigorously document the adoption and impacts of Brachiaria forage crop in Colombia.
Brachiaria grasses were introduced to Latin-America from Africa in the early 50’s and has reached a large adoption in Brazil.
Over the past several decades, CIAT and other partners in the region have led research and agronomic evaluation that has expanded the use of Brachiaria cultivars to other countries in Latin-America.
However, there are no rigorous studies that have documented this adoption process. There is also no evidence of the impacts that the adoption of Brachiaria may have generated on the environment and farmers’ livelihoods.

This project aims to fill this gap by using household level survey data and the satellite imagery data to estimate aggregate adoption and impacts of Brachiaria in Colombia.
Other existing data will be used to project aggregate level adoption estimates in other countries in Latin America, such as Peru, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.