<mark>transfers alleviated negative nutritional impacts (Ecker</mark> _<mark>et al.</mark>_ <mark>2023), and both in cash and in-kind transfers helped households switch to activities with higher return and liquidity needs or risk (</mark> Schwab 2019). In <mark>Mali, exposure to</mark> conflict also reduced use of conventional inputs by farmers, an effect that was partly reversed via cash transfers (Sessou and Henning 2024). Cash transfers fostered investment in profitable endeavors beyond subsistence for men but also affected marital migration of women (Hidrobo _et al._ 2022a).

Earlier studies used satellite data on night lights (Chiovelli et al. 2018), complemented by vegetation indices (Ben Yishay et al. 2024), to assess the impact of landmine clearance on economic activity at a granular level. Ours is to the best of our knowledge the first study that relies on administrative and remotely sensed data jointly to analyze short-term farm-level effects of an intervention in near real time in a setting where an ongoing conflict makes other forms of data collection very challenging to implement. Our ability to identify average effects that were not be detected in a survey as well as heterogeneity of such effects across locations and fam size groups suggests that use of administrative data can usefully complement traditional approaches to data collection in the agriculture sector, as noted also by Yacoubou Djima and Kilic (2024).

In Ukraine’s context, some simple administrative measures such as storing historical registry information and ensuring <mark>applications for and final award of other types of support are recorded in SAR</mark> can help to improve the quality of estimates, and regulation to govern and implement such measures is already under preparation. Improved collection of training data <mark>beyond the country’s five main crops c</mark> ould help to expand the range of outcome variables considered while donors could help ensure that future programs are designed in a way that makes them more amenable to impact evaluation.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 documents the context of Ukraine’s agriculture and PSG implementation modalities. Section 3 provides details on war effects and PSG access based on phone survey data. Section 4 expands on this by using administrative and remotely sensed information to assess targeting quality and program impact on area cultivated with summer crops in the 2023 season, directly after resources were received. Section 5 concludes with implications for policy and research.

# **2. Context and setting**

Given its turbulent history of collectivization and famine in the first half of the 20<sup>th</sup> century and privatization at the beginning of the 21<sup>st</sup> century, Ukraine’s agricultural sector is distinctly different from what is found in other European countries. Coming at a time of reforms to improve transparency and create preconditions for a functioning and socially inclusive market economy, the war triggered by the invasion led to a severe disruption of agricultural of grains and oilseeds, major damage to the stock of physical capital, and unprecedented population displacement. To help address some of the resulting challenges and adopt key 5