One Acre Fund – Planning Grant for Research on Tree Program (September 2022)

Note: This page summarizes the rationale behind a GiveWell-recommended grant to One Acre Fund. One Acre Fund staff reviewed this page prior to publication.

Published: December 2022

In September 2022, we recommended that EA Funds make a grant of $77,523 to One Acre Fund to support the planning of data collection activities to evaluate its tree program, which provides tree seedlings to small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.1 This program aims to generate economic returns for farmers who plant, prune, and harvest fast-growing and maturing tree species over an extended period.2 One Acre Fund expects to use this grant to pay for staff costs related to developing research plans, in collaboration with an external evaluator,3 for some or all of the following research activities:

• a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in Rwanda and/or Burundi,
• follow-up on a previous RCT in Kenya, and/or
• additional surveys to establish the value of wood products and farmer use of wood products.4

Depending on the results of the planning work, One Acre Fund may submit a proposal to GiveWell in early 2023 for funding for data collection activities.

GiveWell recommended this grant via our policy for small discretionary grantmaking. As a small discretionary grant, this funding opportunity did not receive the same review as larger grants we recommend. Instead, we more minimally evaluated the case for the grant and any potential risks or downsides.

Note added March 2023: GiveWell spoke with staff members from One Acre Fund on August 5, 2022; September 19, 2022; October 11, 2022; November 18, 2022; and January 20, 2023 as part of its investigation into an RCT of One Acre Fund's tree program. Notes from those conversations are here.

Sources

• 1

  "More than half of the world's dollar a day poor are smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa[1]. After years of experimentation, One Acre Fund has identified that simply giving away timber tree seedlings is a highly cost-effective intervention for improving this population’s welfare." One Acre Fund, Tree Program Results for GiveWell, September 2022, p. 1.

• 2
  • “One Acre Fund launched our agroforestry platform ten years ago, and as of 2021 we now support 1.9 million farmers in planting ~40 million trees each year. After initially deploying a ‘tree seed kit’ intervention where farmers grew their own seedlings from seeds and transplanted them into the ground, 1AF now deploys a more adoptable model of nursery production of seedlings, which are then distributed to farmers and transplanted into the ground. Our tree-planting work spans nine country programs, each of which is tailored to local needs and context, but all programs adhere to the following general structure:
    • Production: We cultivate seedlings at scale, through centralized nurseries and a network of trained micro-nursery entrepreneurs.
    • Distribution: Seedlings are either delivered by truck to rural villages or farmers simply walk to their local micro-nursery.
    • Training: Farmers receive trainings on seedling planting and care. Trainers highlight the strong economic and environmental benefits trees can have on farmers’ livelihoods, and promote the habit of annual planting.
    • Stewardship: One Acre Fund follows up with farmers to evaluate survival and growth. Trees are eventually sold as timber; meanwhile farmers are trained on replanting and sustainable agroforestry.” One Acre Fund, Tree Program Results for GiveWell, September 2022, pp. 3-4.
  • Andrew Youn, Executive Director, One Acre Fund, Comments on a draft of this page, November 7, 2022 (unpublished)

• 3

  One Acre Fund, Budget provided to GiveWell, September 27, 2022 (unpublished).

• 4

  Andrew Youn, Executive Director, One Acre Fund, Email to GiveWell, September 7, 2022 (unpublished).