14 pages., Edutainment, the combination of education with entertainment through various media such as television, radio, mobile phone applications and games, is increasingly being used as an approach to stimulate innovation and increase agricultural productivity amongst smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Shamba Shape Up, a widely publicised makeover reality TV programme, is an example of edutainment that has received considerable attention, and airs in three countries in East Africa where it is estimated to be watched by millions of viewers.
There is no published academic research on the influence of makeover television formats on innovation systems and processes in smallholder agriculture. Using an Agricultural Innovation Systems approach, this paper explores how makeover edutainment is influencing smallholder farmer innovation systems together with the effect this is having on smallholder farms. In the absence of previous research, it articulates a Theory of Change which draws on research traditions from mass communication, agricultural extension and innovation systems.
Data came from two large scale quantitative (n = 9885 and n = 1572) surveys and in-depth participatory qualitative research comprising focus group discussions, participatory budgets, agricultural timelines, case studies and key information interviews in Kenya. An estimated 430,000 farmers in the study area were benefiting from their interaction with the programme through increased income and / or a range of related social benefits including food security, improving household health, diversification of livelihood choices, paying school fees for children and increasing their community standing / social capital.
Participatory research showed SSU enhanced an already rich communication environment and strengthened existing processes of innovation. It helped set the agenda for discussions within farming communities about opportunities for improving smallholder farms, while also giving specific ideas, information and knowledge, all in the context of featured farm families carefully selected so that a wide range of viewers would identify with them and their challenges.
Broadcasts motivated and inspired farmers to improve their own farms through a range of influences including entertainment, strong empathy with the featured host farm families, the way ideas emerged through interaction with credible experts, and importantly through stimulating widespread discussion and interaction amongst and between farmers and communities of experts on agricultural problems, solutions and opportunities. The fact that local extension workers also watched the programmes further enhanced the influence on local innovation systems.
The findings indicate that well designed makeover edutainment can strongly influence agricultural innovation processes and systems resulting in impact on the agricultural production and behaviours of large numbers of smallholder farmers.
19 pages., ISSN: 2168-3565 (Print)
2168-3573 (Online), Via online journal, Biodiversity conservation outside designated protected areas remains challenging in South Africa, where 80% of the biodiversity resources occur on private and communal lands. This applies to the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, which is the focus of this study. Landholders logically choose agricultural production ahead of conservation, which they often perform using non-ecological methods. Extension is well positioned to promote ecological agriculture, but its current contribution is unknown. This study examined the role of extension in ecological agriculture in KZN by investigating extension’s promotion of ecological agriculture among smallholder farmers and the factors impacting their employment of ecologically compatible practices. Data was collected through semistructured interviews with 44 respondents, comprising 5 provincial biodiversity conservation practitioners, 1 national biodiversity conservation manager, and 1 national and 4 provincial agricultural extension managers, selected by purposive sampling; as well as 25 extension officers and 8 farmers, selected by convenience sampling. The study found that extension mainly engages in technology transfer and distribution of production inputs, which poses challenges to biodiversity conservation. Extension shows little concern for biodiversity, and effectively promotes its degradation. Four sets of factors impacting extension’s capacity to promote ecological agriculture emerged: household/community-level, governmental, extension management, and ecological factors. Key among these were inadequate involvement of youth and men in agriculture; inadequate household production resources; poor collaboration and coordination between extension and biodiversity conservation institutions; top-down extension intervention; poor extension management and delivery capacities; and irregular and inadequate rainfall, as well as droughts and flooding. The study concluded that there is a need for a clearly articulated extension and biodiversity conservation policy supporting appropriate linkages and better coordination and integration of services among extension and biodiversity agencies within the National and Provincial Departments of Agriculture and with farmers; more effective agricultural education in schools; strengthening extension support systems; and creating conducive atmospheres for effective extension.
36 pages., via online journal., This article examines the challenges facing agriculture in Africa. First the article outlines agriculture’s connection with overall economic growth; then, the author evaluates agricultural productivity and food security in Africa in 2010. From this point, the author evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of seven paths that African agriculture is likely to evolve along between now and 2050: five for Sub-Saharan African and two for North Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the types of farming proposed are: extensive, mechanized; intensive export; intensive peri-urban; subsistence; and reserves, game ranching, and tourism. In North Africa, the author proposes: irrigated and rainfed. In order to realize the most positive benefits of these paths in 2050, Africa has to tackle six challenges, outlined by the author: reducing population growth, promoting irrigation, adapting the role of the state, promoting the acceleration of technical change (including fertilizer and biotechnology), and preparing for climate change. Increasing the competitiveness of Africa’s commercial farming will improve income, inequality, and nutrition across the continent.
Abstract via online journal. 2 pages., Technological innovation is vital to economic growth and food security in sub-Saharan Africa where agricultural productivity has been stagnant for a long time. Extension services and learning from peer farmers are two common approaches to facilitate the diffusion of new technologies, but little is known about their relative effectiveness. Selection bias, whereby well-motivated training participants would perform better even without extension services, as well as knowledge spillovers, where non-participants can indirectly benefit from extension services, are among the major threats to causal inference. Using a unique sequential randomized experiment on agricultural training, this study attempts to meet the dual objectives of executing rigorous impact evaluation of extension services and subsequent spillovers on rice production in Cote d’Ivoire. Specifically, to reduce selection bias, we randomly assigned eligibility for training participation; and to satisfy the stable unit treatment value assumption, control-group farmers were initially restricted from exchanging information with treated-group farmers who had received rice management training. Once some positive impacts were confirmed, information exchange between the treated and control farmers was encouraged. We found that the initial performance gaps created by the randomized assignment disappeared over time, due presumably to social learning from peer farmers. A detailed analysis concerning the information network and peer effects provided suggestive evidence that there were information and technology spillovers from treated to control farmers after removing the information exchange restriction. Overall, our study demonstrates that information dissemination by farmers can be as effective in improving practices as the initial training provided by extension services.
6 pages., via online journal., Cross-cultural communication is dealt with and more specifically, the communicative competence of 15 white English-speaking farmers when they speak Xhosa to their labourers is assessed. This research was conducted in the Elliot, Ugie, and Maclear areas of the north-eastern Cape. A broad sociolinguistic framework drawing on both ethnographic and ethnomethodological principles was used; complications caused by cross-cultural differences which are reflected in language, and which may lead to possible communication breakdown, were isolated. The actual analysis of speech in terms of ethnomethodological principles, such as turn-taking and the co-operative principle, was undertaken.
Stoudmann, Natasha (author), Waeber, Patrick O. (author), Randriamalala, Ihoby H. (author), Garcia, Claude (author), and Forest Management and Development, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland
Madagascar Wildlife Conservation, Ambatondrazaka, Madagascar
Forêts et Sociétés, CIRAD, Montpellier, France
Format:
Online journal article
Publication Date:
2017-11
Published:
Madagascar: Science Direct
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 108 Document Number: D10938
Spurk, Christoph (author), Asule, Pamellah (author), Ofori-Baah, Rebecca (author), Chikopela, Louis (author), Diarra, Boubacar (author), Koch, Carmen (author), and Wageningen University
Format:
Online journal article
Publication Date:
2019-08-21
Published:
Netherlands: Taylor & Francis
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 108 Document Number: D10944
22 pages, via online journal article, Purpose: Soil fertility is decreasing in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. To mitigate this trend, various agricultural technologies are available, but their uptake by farmers has been low. Perception of the problem, information exposure, and knowledge play a major role in adoption of technologies. This study assessed empirically the levels of perception, knowledge and information exposure among African farmers as an indicator for potential adoption of soil fertility technologies.
Design/Methodology/approach: The study used survey data of more than 2,400 small-scale farmers selected through random sampling from Ghana, Kenya, Mali and Zambia. The survey investigated socio-economic factors, exposure to media, perception and knowledge of soil fertility and other information.
Findings: Many farmers did not perceive soil fertility as a major challenge, except in Mali; farmers were hardly receiving information on soil fertility from professional agricultural sources, and they often lacked accurate knowledge about soil fertility technologies. Radio was by far the most used information source for farmers.
Practical implications: The study has exposed the need for interventions to increase awareness, information exposure, and knowledge about soil fertility among farmers to strengthen the adoption of soil fertility technologies. It also calls for innovative ways of strengthening extension services through links with radio.
Theoretical implications: The role of communication in the uptake of agricultural innovations is still under-researched, and hence this study exposes the need to investigate in-depth knowledge, perception levels, and quality and frequency of information exposure on various channels of soil fertility management.
Originality: This is one of the few studies empirically measuring perception, information frequency on various channels, and knowledge of soil fertility among small-scale farmers in African countries.
Ragasa, Catherina (author), Ulimwengo, John (author), Randriamamonjy, Josee (author), Badibanga, Thaddee (author), and International Food Policy Research Institution
Washington, DC office
Western and Central Africa Regional Office
Format:
Online journal article
Publication Date:
2016-04
Published:
Netherlands: Taylor and Francis
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 108 Document Number: D10953
32 pages, via online journal article, Purpose: As part of the institutional reforms and agricultural restructuring in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), this paper provides an assessment of the performance of the agricultural extension system as well as factors explaining it.
Method: This paper involves key informants’ interviews and surveys of 107 extension organizations and 162 extension agents in randomly selected 156 villages, analyzed using qualitative and logistic regression methods.
Findings and Practical Implications: Results show that despite having one of the highest extension agent-to-farmer ratio and a pluralistic extension system, DRC fails to deliver knowledge and technologies to rural areas due to lack of coordination, no unified and clear policy and mandate, lack of funding, aging and low competencies of agents, and lack of mobility and interactions of agents with key actors. This paper complements findings by other studies that number of agents is not a sufficient indication of performance, but an effective system needs to focus on the enabling environment for agents to be motivated to work as mandated. In this paper, enabling conditions that are found to be statistically significant are external funding, enforcement of performance targets, systems of rewards and sanctions, mobility to foster linkages, and skills development.
Originality: This paper contributes by: (1) analyzing a cross-section of various organizations and agents to identify factors that explain variations in performance in a statistical and systematic approach; (2) providing insights on how to prioritize investments and options for a fragile state like DRC, with weak infrastructure and institutional capacity and with a long history of neglect for their national extension system; and (3) illustrating how a rich and well-cited conceptual framework can be implemented empirically to provide policy options for a country like DRC.
12 pages, via online journal, Since the rice crisis of 2007, the government of Benin has initiated many programmes for rice intensification. Comparison of three rice production areas shows that local rice production has indeed been increased by the facilities provided by the government programmes. Although broadly the same facilities (market outlet, credit, input, etc.) were provided to rice farmers in the three study areas, which are located close to one another, there are not only similar, but also some different outcomes with regard to farmers' practices. There were also some unexpected changes, like the shift from limited collective canal cleaning to individual canal cleaning in Koussin-Lélé and the use of pumps in upland areas in Bamè. The study explores the interplay between these external interventions of government programmes and local actions of farmers to explain the outcomes. Using an actor-oriented perspective, the study concludes that farmers' agency played a critical role in the success of interventions; the changes occurred because of local actions of the farmers and intermediaries interacting with the external interventions at diverse junctures. Differences in strategies for resolving livelihood problems, in production options and biophysical conditions influence farmers' local actions and contribute to the explanation of the diversity of outcomes. The main lesson drawn from this research is that evaluation studies should not consider external interventions as the only or primary source of change. The dynamic interplay between local agency, intermediation and external interventions makes room for change.
Kristjanson, P (author), Place, F (author), Franzel, F (author), Thornton, P.K. (author), and International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya
International Centre for Research on Agroforestry, Nairobi, Kenya
Format:
Online journal article
Publication Date:
2002-02-23
Published:
Kenya: Science Direct
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 109 Document Number: D10958
20 pages, via online journal, In this paper we provide evidence to show that farmers' perspectives on poverty processes and outcomes are critical in the early stages of evaluating impact of agricultural research on poverty. We summarize lessons learned from farmer impact assessment workshops held in five African locations, covering three agro-ecological zones and five different agroforestry and livestock technologies arising from collaborative national–international agricultural research. Poverty alleviation is a process that needs to be understood before impact can be measured. Workshops such as those we describe can help researchers to identify farmers' different ways of managing and using a technology and likely effects, unanticipated impacts, major impacts to pursue in more quantitative studies, the primary links between agricultural technology and poverty, and key conditioning factors affecting adoption and impact that can be used to stratify samples in more formal analyses. Farmer workshops inform other qualitative and quantitative impact assessment methods. We discuss the linkage of farmer-derived information with GIS-based approaches that allow more complete specification of recommendation domains and broader-scale measurement of impact.
