For further information contact: Reinhardt Howeler

Researchers and extension workers merely facilitate the process. They may set out demonstration plots to show the range of options—like a menu—from which farmers can select the most suitable ones for testing in their own fields. The facilitators (researchers or extensionists, also called “development workers”)  provide planting material of new varieties or of new intercrops to be tested, fertilizers or other inputs to be tested, or plastic sheets for use in erosion control trials to measure soil losses.

Initially, the facilitators may need to help farmers select the best site for the trials, lay out the plots, and establish the selected treatments. During the growth cycle, they visit the farmers regularly to discuss the progress of the trials and, if necessary, solve certain problems. At harvest, the facilitators may organize a field day, inviting participating and non-participating farmers to help harvest the trials together and discuss results.

Also, on this field day, the researchers may calculate the average yield (if the same treatments were used in all trials), as well as the gross income, production costs, and net income for each treatment. These calculations should help farmers select the most useful treatments for further testing, adaptation, or adoption on larger areas of their production fields.

The conceptual framework of this approach is shown in the diagram below.

Once the farmers identify useful varieties or production practices through their FPR trials, they can also help disseminate their results. Effective FPE approaches include:

• Cross-visits. Farmers that like to participate in the project visit sites where FPR trials have already been conducted and new practices adopted. During these visits, the farmers from the latter sites explain their reasons for adopting new technologies. After the visits, the newly  participating farmers may adopt new technologies immediately, or first conduct FPR trials in their own fields.

• Field days at harvest. Farmers from neighboring villages are invited to participate in harvesting the experimental plots. Each farmer then evaluates each treatment in the various trials, and discusses, with all the other farmers, the pros and cons of the various practices or varieties tested.

• Training. Two or three key farmers from each pilot site, together with their local extension workers participate in a training course where they learn about various FPR methodologies, how to carry out experiments, and how to implement commonly selected technologies such as setting out contour lines or planting, maintaining, and multiplying hedgerows to control erosion. After spending several days together in the training course, farmers and extension workers get to know each other well; they are encouraged to form local “FPR teams” to help other farmers in their community conduct FPR trials or adopt new technologies.

• Community-based self-help groups. Farmers are encouraged to set up these groups as a way of organizing themselves to conduct FPR trials, implement selected practices, and, in some cases, manage a rotating fund, from which members can borrow money for production inputs.