Our pioneering work in Kenya has confirmed the efficacy of the Vipani method. The method requires concurrent behavior change towards meeting obligations by farmers and other parties in order to achieve sustained and substantial change in farmers' incomes and well-being. Access to loans, technologies, markets and market information did produce bumper crops and quick gains in farmers' incomes as expected. But, sustaining such gains beyond the short-term was not possible without both farmers and other participants meeting their obligations consistently. Eliciting such behavioral modifications is both necessary and time-consuming in poverty-stricken settings where contracts have limited value and reneging on contracts has no consequences.

Even with varying levels of behavioral modification, Vipani produced a 3-fold increase among participating farmers' annual incomes, measured from a $150 baseline during the first three years of iterative testing. With such newfound income, the majority of these early participants quickly acquired new assets. However, many of these early farmers failed to build on their economic gains because they considered these short-term gains as a windfall that they must take advantage of within the expected short time span of a typical development project that they are used to unlike Vipani.

Even a farmer who would renege on an obligation and sell crops to an alternate buyer would in fact benefit from loans or technologies he/she accessed. The farmer's gains would only be transient since the farmer would not be able to break contracts many times as the buyers would then adopt counter measures to minimize their profit risks. The Vipani method focuses on reducing these escalating "tit-for-tat" responses by strengthening trust between market participants. For this reason, Vipani does not believe it will create farmer prosperity through time-bound project cycles or as a guaranteed outcome of loans, technologies, information or market linkages. Instead, Vipani perseveres to foster trust networks at the grassroots.

How we measure impact

Farmer Prosperity

Increased income from farming is the most direct tangible impact that Vipani makes on the farmers. Vipani tracks increases in income for every farmer it supports. Vipani starts this process by collecting baseline data when recruiting farmers. Vipani then tracks each farmer's loans, crop yields, profits and losses on an ongoing basis.

An increase in income directly influences the well-being and social status of the farmer and her/his family. This would be reflected in the sufficiency and nutrition of food produced and purchased, acquisition of assets such as land, home or mobile phone, paying for children's education and family's healthcare and other little "luxuries" the family always longed for. Vipani knows these impacts on families becasue of its constant and continuing interactions with them.

Local Economy

Vipani reaches a majority of the poor farmers in a community, even those without land, thus saturating and concentrating the impact in contiguous areas. This is unlike other anti-poverty measures that reach fewer than 10% of the poor in any given community or locality. As a direct result of this concentration of impact in each locality, the local demand for goods and services increases markedly by generating new jobs, increased business for existing enterprises and opportunities for new enterprises. Because of Vipani's continued local presence, Vipani knows these impacts that it creates.