Questions of Scale:
Navigating Challenges and Opportunities
Over the course of 2019, as new and existing programs and partnerships expanded their reach and sophistication, PAD’s operational footprint grew rapidly.
When PAD commenced operations in 2016, we served just 26,900 farmers in Gujarat, India, and Western Kenya. In 2019, our services reached 3.53 million farmers.
Beyond the numbers, our expanding theatre of operations presents opportunities, challenges, and new questions that will shape the way we structure and conduct our work in 2020 and beyond.
Iterating and Building Services
Meeting need and demand
The development of the MoA-INFO service in Kenya offers a rich example of how PAD is capable of deepening a service over time. MoA-INFO began as a Fall Armyworm advisory service, but in 2019 was iterated to provide farmers and agro-dealers with actionable information on six crops and optimal input use, in addition to its foundational pest-management content.
Empowering Women Farmers
Improving livelihoods and nutrition
Female farmers in rural India confront unique and gendered barriers that inhibit their ability to access and benefit from agronomic information.
How can digital systems empower poor and rural women? In 2019 we piloted content specifically targeting women farmers on our Ama Krushi service in Odisha, India.
Through Questions We Grow
Research and learning informs everything that we do.
Evidence is our touchstone, informs improvements to our systems, and enables us to identify and scale success to better serve larger numbers of farmers.
We aim not only to filter out success from failure, but to learn and to make this learning widely available. We value failure just as much as success. No question is too big (or too small) to fail, and relative failure may spark new questions that lead to unforeseen successes.
Nobel Company
Michael Kremer is a Nobel Prize Winner!
In the second week of October 2019, the Nobel committee announced that the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (aka the Nobel Prize in Economics) would be awarded to PAD's co-founder and board member, Michael Kremer together with his long-standing colleagues and collaborators, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo.
Our Team
PAD is powered by skilled and committed individuals, teams and leadership.
2019 marked a year of significant organizational growth and development. Our multi-national, multi-talented and intrepid team has grown and developed new capabilities.
We also bid farewell to Madhur Jain, PAD's inaugural India Country Director. His parting words offer wise counsel and buttress our ambition to do more.
Our Partners
Partners facilitate reach, expertise and access
A key component of PAD's rapid expansion is the quality and capabilities of our partners. We have been privileged to develop deep and enduring relationships with 27 implementation partners spanning the public, private, non-governmental and multilateral sectors.