Farmer Participatory Research - Rhetoric and reality (Paperback)

How does one design, implement and evaluate participative agriculture research? Taking farming systems research as a point of departure, and with the objective of developing monitoring and evaluation guidelines, the authors of this volume describe and critique how farmer participatory research is presently being used within a broad range of agricultural research and development programmes.;A guiding principle for farmer participatory research is the assumption that farmers engage in their own research. However, the study highlights the fact that processes of local experimentation are still inadequately understood, and neither research objectives or research activities appear to be based on an analysis of the characteristics of existing farmer experimentation. This prevents the establishment of a collegiate interface between farmers and researchers.;The authors suggest that a priority is the linkage of project objectives with implementation strategies. To this end they provide a conceptual and methodological framework for the analysis of farmers' experimentation and local information exchange. Using this as a base, more appropriate project designs and monitoring and evaluation strategies will be possible.