The UK Department for International Development (DFID) selected COSA as one of 24 data monitoring initiatives relating to agriculture that were reviewed (out of 103 monitoring initiatives identified) with respect to their degree of achievement in meeting a set of 34 criteria. Among the notable COSA system merits cited by the report:

• “Only one initiative (COSA) included different treatments and conventional farms (as counterfactuals) in their sampling frame.”
• “Only six of the twenty-four initiatives have been designed to support decisions, of which only some decisions are specific, e.g. investment decisions supported by COSA”
• “There was a lack of clarity on data sharing arrangements in all but one agro-ecosystem initiative (COSA) and one livelihood initiative (LSMS-ISA), which both make their data publicly available.”