The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic shocked most economic activities including agriculture and food production with limited access to key inputs such as labour, seed, fertilizer and other agrochemicals. Food marketing and trade were equally disrupted as cash flows, liquidity and credit access were constrained. Different countries, organisations and households improvised various strategies and measures to mitigate the shocks in the food value chain that would have had far reaching implications. In Uganda, one international organization, the Agricultural Business Initiative (aBi), supported a project titled “Building the Resilience of Smallholder Farmers through Increasing Access to Agro-Inputs” to safeguard the production, trade and processing of key food staples. This paper assesses the contribution of such emergency projects, and draws lessons for similar future interventions. We use cross sectional data collected from project beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries as a control group, and propensity score matching technique to measure the project impact. Results show a significant positive impact of the project intervention on crop yields and household crop income. The study recommends partnerships with local government extension workers for promoting sustainability and scaling out. Future similar projects could target to support farmers based on individual capacity in terms of resources especially land instead of a uniform kind of support which excludes some farmers.

Keywords: Agro-inputs subsidy, COVID-19, evaluation, propensity score matching