Guideline for measuring agronomic gain key performance indicators in on-farm trials

Agronomic gain key performance indicators (KPIs) are designed to monitor, evaluate and measure the impact of changes in agronomic practices in the CGIAR Excellence in Agronomy initiative (EiA). The current KPIs cover land productivity and its stability, resource use efficiency and soil health (Table 1; Saito et al., 2021). It is expected that the KPIs will be used across geographies, farming systems, and research and development (R&D) stages to deliver a greater depth of understanding of agronomic gain than has ever been achieved before. This document provides a guideline for measuring agronomic gain KPIs in on-farm trials.
On-farm trials belong to the proof-of-concept stage, which involves the testing and assessment of improved agronomic practices and their impact on agronomic gain (Fig. 1). These trials are researcher managed, conducted in multiple environments. They compare local, current farmers’ practices or recommended practices (control treatment) with alternative, improved practices that are expected to perform better and are introduced by researchers. These treatments are implemented in the same field, with plots arranged side by side, with the option of replicates within the same field. We will not consider on-farm trials in which improved agronomic practices are piloted or demonstrated in the entire field, without a valid control in the same field.
Ideally, all KPIs should be collected in all trials. However, early in the proof-of-concept stage (e.g. first year of testing), the final decision on which indicators will be collected at each site will be decided by the researchers, usually depending on available resources. Later, when improved agronomic practices are evaluated for their suitability to be moved to the next stage — specifically when moving from the ‘proof-of-concept’ or the ‘pilot’ to ‘scaling’ stages — the decision-making should be based on data on all indicators (Fig. 1). Only the full set of indicator data (yield, its stability, profitability, labor and capital demand, soil health, climate change adaptation etc.) will enable comprehensive estimation of agronomic gains of improved agronomic practices and prevent individual aspects or features of the improved practices hampering adoption.
After an introduction to KPIs, this document provides examples of agronomic gain KPI assessment. In the last section, we present frequently asked questions (FAQs) related to agronomic gain KPIs and their assessment.