| Property | Value |
| Name | Towards integrated soil fertility management in Malawi: incorporating participatory approaches in |
| Description | Kanyama-Phiri, G.,S. Snapp, B. Kamanga and K. Wellard. 2000. Towards integrated soil fertility management in Malawi: incorporating participatory approaches in agricultural research. IIED Series on Managing Africa's Soils. No. 11.In order to effectively develop integrated soil fertility management strategies and disseminate the resulting technologies, we need new approaches that will enable farmers and researchers to build working partnerships. Participatory research is one option, but it is often considered too time-consuming and criticised for not generating quantitative data. Researchers in Malawi have taken up the challenge to overcome these constraints, and have developed both a short-term and a longer-term approach to participatory research. This paper describes the various steps followed in two case studies that followed each approach. The short-term approach tested and disseminated ‘best bet’ technologies in target villages in four different agro-ecological zones. Over three years researchers developed a ‘mother & baby’ satellite trial that was designed to meet both their own and farmers’ requirements. They used innovative trial designs and consultative methods, and in many sites obtained promising results from on-farm trials with intensified cropping systems incorporating legumes. Biological performance was measured against the farmers’ assessments of the new technologies, and farmers also stressed the importance of testing a range of options, such as a wide range of legumes grown with small amounts of mineral fertiliser. The longer-term programme was implemented over a period of more than five years. This involved a participatory, community-oriented approach to work in a watershed located in a densely populated area of southern Malawi. The research addressed the problem of eroded slopes used by farmers with limited access to resources. It was difficult to make progress on these degraded sites: maize generally performed very poorly on the steep slopes, and without nitrogen fertiliser the legume-based technologies were not very productive. In flatter areas and valleys the Sesbania sesban inter-crop system produced the highest yields, but the drawback of this system was that it required the highest investment in terms of labour. We believe that it is important for researchers and farm advisors to have a long-term commitment to working with farm communities, particularly for problematic areas such as the eroded, degraded sites and small land holdings typified by the Songani watershed in Southern Malawi. Our findings indicate that there is considerable scope for using participatory research methods to develop more appropriate technologies. These two case studies show how farmers’ input can be incorporated regularly into the early stages of research. Policy makers may need to be drawn into this work as well, as there appear to be no easy answers to the problems posed by degraded sites. Dissemination of ‘best bet’ technologies for other, better-endowed sites may also benefit from policy interventions. |
| Filename | Link to soils_11.pdf |
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| Creator | admin |
| Created On: | 11/20/2008 22:21 |
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