Impact indicates the effect(s) agrarian reform programs have had in terms of technical, economic, socio-cultural, institutional, or environmental changes. Assessing such impact is therefore to determine whether concrete measures have indeed contributed to the observed changes. This requires answering the following two questions:

Have anticipated or unanticipated changes (benefits or negative side-effects) occurred in the area served or covered by the measures? This may include changes in the level of production and productivity, food consumption, household income and standard of living, and effects on the natural environment.

Can these changes be plausibly related to the utilization of program measures (goods and services) by the target group?

Effective impact assessment requires a set of indicators that combines the following factors:

• Simple: the indicators are easily measurable.

• Systematic: the indicators are logically linked.

• Complete: the set of indicators covers fully the chain of development hypotheses.

For a comprehensive impact assessment, it is not sufficient to only consider intended impacts and expected effects of the measures of cooperating institutions and other external factors. One also has to be aware that there are a number of effects that may not be anticipated or intended, but which are nevertheless attributable to the measures implemented. These interrelations are depicted below.

In order to come to a meaningful impact assessment of agrarian reform at manageable cost by means of an indicator system, the following recommendations are given:

Make sure that you have a convincing and logical hierarchy of objectives including important assumptions and possible negative side effects. Also clarify what kind of side effects still unknown may occur.

For each of these planning parameters at the different logical levels, specify clear indicators that are already available or easily measurable.

Get the baseline value (before the start of the program) for each of these indicators.

Then define phased targets (e.g. for several years) for each of these indicators, starting from the assumed implementation capacity, with clearly stated hypotheses on the degree of effectiveness for achieving the intended impacts. In case of an ex-post analysis, specify the achievements with respect to these indicators for a time-series of at least three points in time.

If used for an ongoing impact assessment within the framework of a monitoring system, the targets specified initially may be revised after the first round of monitoring information is available.

The program planning matrix provides reasonable means and tools to come to an assessment of the impacts of the agrarian reform. For whatever area one intends to do this, one can take this program planning matrix and fill its indicators with the respective figures.