Volunteer farmer trainers(VFTs): An effective extension approach for helping farmers improve food security

Steven Franzel, Evelyne Kiptot, Josephine Kirui (ICRAF) Eija Laitinen and Peter Kuria Githinji (HAMK)

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Objectives and Methods

• Farming is increasingly knowledge-intensive, yet extension staff are few. • Can volunteer farmer trainers (VFTs), backstopped by extension staff, close this gap? • No studies available on lessons across organizations/countries using VFT approach. • Our objective: to assess effectiveness of the VFT approach and ways to improve it • Our methods: surveys of extension managers, VFTs, the farmers that VFTs trained

and randomly selected farmers in villages where VFTs operated.

Selected key findings 1. Training farmers •VFT programs help organizations train more farmers and encourage farmers to learn from each other. • VFTs trained an average of 54 farmers during the month preceding the survey. The median (typical) VFT trained 20. • Women trained as many farmers as men though within a more limited area.

2. Organizations views of VFTs, Kenya

Organizations’ views of benefits of VFTs

Organizations’ views of weaknesses of VFTs

3. Gender. The approach empowers women and improves their access to extension. Organizations in Kenya are able to achieve a 30 percent higher proportion of women among VFTs than among their extension staff. But proactive measures are needed for recruiting female farmer trainers, such as targeting women’s groups.

Proportion of women extension staff and VFTs

4. Motivations to become a farmer trainer •Access to knowledge and altruism were the main reasons farmers become VFTs. •Three years after serving as a VFT, earning cash from extension activities (from selling seed, training) becomes an important reason for many. •Extension providers can make their VFT programs more effective and sustainable by providing low-cost incentives such as badges, certificates, community recognition, field tours and promoting cash-earning activities.

Table: Reasons why farmers become VFTs

Dissemination

•Dissemination of our results has helped lead to an increased profile for the VFT approach in global debates as evidenced by •- its uptake by the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services in its 2015 Addis Ababa Declaration, •- reports on our results in

the FAO 2014 State of Food and Agriculture Report, the 2014 CGIAR Report on Consortium Research Projects and in an article in the Manchester Guardian (UK).

End users include • extension managers, to encourage them to adopt the approach and good

practices in implementing it • policy makers, to help them support the VFT approach • researchers, on how to assess effectiveness of extension approaches and

sustainability Organizations taking up the approach as a result, in part, of our research include 1 African-wide association, 2 government agencies, 2 NGOs, 1 national farmers’ federation and 51 farmer cooperatives serving over 100,000 households in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda.