Document(s) 23 of 34

Farmers innovate due to necessity, changing conditions and curiosity, doing informal experiments on new ideas either from their own ingenuity or learned from other farmers, researchers, extensionists and other information sources like the mass media. However, research and extension pay little attention to the importance of local innovation for agricultural development.

Two regional development projects in Africa have found that technologies generated by farmers from locally-available resources are likely to be more relevant to the majority of smallholder farmers than introduced technologies that depend heavily on external inputs. From 1997 to 2001, the Indigenous Soil and Water Conservation (ISWC) project in Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe, and the Promoting Farmer Innovation (PFI) project in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, identified indigenous innovations of about 1,000 farmers in land and water management as entry points to joint experimentation to further develop "home-grown" ideas.

Main Components of the Approach

Training in Participatory Methods

Training workshops in Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Participatory Technology Development (PTD) helped change how many researchers and extensionists regarded themselves as superior to the illiterate farmers. In Tunisia, the PRA and PTD training workshop in 1997 was the first of its kind in that country. Trainers were flown in from Senegal and Burkina Faso, which was an innovation in itself, as southerners training northerners in Africa is uncommon.

After the follow-up courses, like designing experiments with farmers, the researchers and extensionists treated them with greater respect and were impressed by their innovativeness, creativity and capacity to explain what they do. Some researchers even referred to farmer innovators as "professors" in their own right.

Identifying Farmer Innovators

The projects defined a farmer innovator as "someone who develops or tries out new ideas without having been requested by outsiders to do so". "New" is something that was started in the farmer's lifetime and not inherited from parents, like a farming technique or a different way of organizing things.

After the training, extensionists can more easily recognize and document new things that farmers are developing and trying out.

Aside from asking fieldworkers, innovators are identified through keen observation, interviews with groups and key informants, contests and radio programs, among various other means. In Tunisia, innovators were identified through a weekly regional radio program on "Agriculture and Innovation", where farmers reported their innovations to the radio station by phone and mail.

Initially, innovator seekers tend to focus on individuals, usually men. The projects encouraged them to also identify innovations by women and groups, such as in modifying traditional irrigation systems or developing new ways of managing pasture.

Analyzing Innovators and Innovations

As there is a dearth of documentation about farmer innovation, the ISWC and PFI projects tried to gain a better understanding of outstanding innovators and their motivations.

Most outstanding innovators were resource-poor when they began experimenting 15 or 20 years ago but, because of their improved land husbandry practices, many of them became relatively rich. Through experimentation and successful innovation, they gradually expanded and diversified their farming activities. Many previously poor innovators now harvest enough to meet family food needs even in drought years.

Some innovators are quite young, but most of them are relatively old. Many had been migrant laborers and some had been refugees or soldiers in other regions, where they learned ideas that they tried after returning home. Innovation became continuous, as an innovation led to a new situation and another innovation. For instance, increased yields prompted farmers to devise quicker harvesting methods and to create improved marketing channels.

The ISWC and PFI projects focused on land and water management and found innovations in water harvesting, gully control, tillage methods, pest control, introducing new species or varieties, developing or improving tools, and managing crop residues, soil fertility and biodiversity.

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Systems

Monitoring and evaluation is not just about measuring the number and impact of innovations, but also about analyzing the process of enhancing the farmers' capacity to adapt and improve livelihoods and natural resource management. Who has done what innovation, where, how and why is documented by all partners as a source of learning and guidance for future work. Observations and recording are limited to the smallest possible number of key indicators of interest to those involved.

Project partners and illiterate farmers in Burkina Faso developed a pictorial system of self-recording work inputs. Farmers were keen in recording and deciding what data to collect, as they regarded this as useful in managing their farms better by keeping track of and analyzing the levels of inputs and outputs.

Exchange and Study Visits

Farmer innovators appreciate exchange and study visits as ways of gaining new experience, knowledge and techniques, which they informally experiment on at home. Farmer-to-farmer communication is more effective when visitors and hosts are well prepared, and if both groups review the usefulness of the exchange and deliberate on the reporting of lessons learned.

The PFI project encouraged innovators to organize themselves into clusters of about eight farmers each and exchange experiences within and between clusters. The ISWC project gave innovators the liberty of organizing themselves the way they wanted. In Tanzania, some farmer innovators started forming local groups with neighboring farmers after returning from the exchange visits.

Farmers' Evaluation of Local Innovations

Village workshops organized by extensionists assess the potentials of local innovations for joint experimentation or application to reduce isolating innovators and to stimulate community-led social development processes inspired by farmer innovation. The Bureau of Agriculture in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, brings innovators and their neighbors together in farmers' fora to examine the usefulness of local innovations and technologies from research stations.

Stimulating and Supporting Joint Experimentation

Before joint experimentation, farmers and scientists agree on a research agenda based on local priorities to avoid the danger of scientists defining the experiments and imposing them on the farmers. Advice is offered on designing simple experiments so that both farmers and scientists have a firmer basis for evaluating results. Scientists also explain the reasons behind findings to help farmers understand better the principles and less visible factors influencing the outcome of experiments. Scientists assist in generating hard data to validate findings in conventional scientific terms for convincing other scientists, policymakers and donor agencies. The scientists were amazed that "simple" farmers could state clearly and concisely what they want and need from research. Respecting the local agenda led to more relevant designs of joint experiments in subsequent workshops.

Farmer-to-Farmer Dissemination of Innovations

Farmers cannot and do not wait for the scientists' "go ahead" signal to disseminate approved and validated innovations or technologies. New ideas are spread primarily through farm visits and other forms of farmer-to-farmer communication.

In Burkina Faso, two farmer innovators in neighboring villages developed two systems for disseminating ideas on improved traditional planting pits or zai. One innovator organized annual "markets" where farmers from over 100 villages exchange experiences in adapted tools, specific crops or varieties or growing trees in pits. Another innovator brought together different groups of farmers for onthe-job training. They jointly dug improved pits to rehabilitate very degraded land.

Awareness and Policy

Strategies in raising awareness on farmer innovation and favorably influencing policy include:

Document(s) 23 of 34