Resources

Farmers are seen as informants in most development projects, despite their detailed knowledge and understanding of processes. In the work of the Aga Khan Rural Support Project, the farmers not only gather the information themselves, but they analyse it and make decisions based on their own analysis. The article gives a number of ways in which farmers are encouraged to develop their information gathering and analytical skills. It also discusses farmers' abilities as facilitators and presenters. Six types of farmer generated maps are described in detail, including resource, watershed, thematic, social, base line and monitoring/impact maps.

This paper presents the experiences and lessons obtained in conducting on-farm participatory research in North Omo, Ethiopia, by an foreign NGO. It highlights how PRA techniques are used in the on-farm trials programme. The objective of the project Farmers' Research Project, is to raise incomes of resource-poor households by improving agricultural technology. Farmers' participatory research is the key approach adopted. To achieve this, the agricultural and extension staff on the project were trained in participatory approaches to enable them incorporate farmers participatory research (FRR) into their own work programmes. The paper discusses how farmers are involved in the decision making process about the research which in itself, is an innovation of farming systems research. The paper mentions that one of the ways farmer participation is achieved is through conducting on-farm trials by going through the stages of diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation, using PRA. Each stage is discussed in the paper. In conclusion, the paper mentions the mutual respect of both staff and farmers as experts, close contacts and cross visits as approaches that played an important role in raising the level of understanding.

This paper gives a chronological account of experiences of participatory approaches to natural resource management and rural development in the Vietnam Sweden Cooperation Programme, including the Vietnam Sweden Mountain Rural Development Programme (MRDP) and the Vietnam Sweden Forestry Cooperation Programme (FCP). The five provinces included in the programme are Phu Tho, Yen Bai, Tuyen Quang, Lao Cai and Ha Giang. The authors give a background to the evolution and current discussions of participatory approaches in natural resource management and rural development. A brief introduction is given to the MRDP-FCP programme, followed by a description of the institutional and socioeconomic context in the northern mountain region of Vietnam where the programme was initiated in the early 1990s. The report then goes on to give an analytical story timeline of FCP and MRDP over a 10-year period, based on internal reports, external publications , and monitoring and review documents. Detailed examples are given of more or less effective strategies and methods fro field base learning. While some examples are of technical content, while others relate to facilitation of complex realignments between different stakeholders and institutions at the local level. Some deal directly with community planning and methods for participatory monitoring and review, while others are essentially linked to policy formulation. Examples also include both internal process initiated by MRDP-FCP within the provincial extension systems, and activities that have been carried out in partnership with external research and training organisations.

This article reports on Tamil Nadu Agricultural University collaboration with the Ford Foundation in exploring the applicability of recent advances in farmer participatory research and extension methods to rainfed conditions in Tamil Nadu. It reports on exercises conducted over two days in Kalkaruchi village near Aruppukottai. It describes a sequence of participatory social and resource mapping exercises combined with wealth ranking that attempted to discover the poorest people in the village. The main lesson yielded from the study was that PRA methods revealed hidden complexity and can bring the poorest to the attention of investigators.

The lake Victoria Fisheries Research Project (LVFRP) developed a long term programme in order to get agreement on a plan for the co-management of the Lake Victoria's fisheries project. This article presents the second step in this process and looks at how participatory monitoring systems were initiated at Nkombe Beach in Uganda. It looks at the problems faced, the solutions tried, the monitoring indicators agreed and how this process was replicated in communities in Kenya and Tanzania. Finally it draws a number of conclusions, such as participation requires a two-way flow of information, participatory monitoring is a slow process, context is crucial and nothing goes to plan!