Integrated Soil Water and Nutrient Management and Dry ... - Icrisat

for the whole country. Provincial teams conducted the survey and submitted
individual provincial reports. A workshop was then held in Gweru to present
those reports and map a way forward as the Dutch-sponsored IPPM project
was ending. There was need to establish the impact of these two before the
project ended in December 2002. As a result, all extension officers trained
since initiation of the project in 1997 were invited to help each other evaluate
the project, IPPM as a technology, and use of FSGs as an extension
methodology.
Objectives of the project
The objectives of the first phase were to:
• Improve and accelerate dissemination of research findings from the station,
and the performance of the new technologies under farmers’ conditions by
involving farmers in experimentation and building on their local knowledge,
thereby strengthening critical feedback to research, and in the process
relieving research systems of the need to extend their capacity for locationspecific
studies.
• Increase the ability of farmers to make informed decisions of what works
best for them, based on their own observations of experimental plots in
their FSGs, and to explain their reasoning.
• Establish coherent farmers groups that facilitate the work of the research
and extension workers, providing the demand of a demand-driven system
but also creating conditions allowing farmers to graduate from continuing
dependence on external support. Field School Groups exist on an intensive
basis for one or two growing seasons only, with some lighter support needed
for another year or two. The groups continue to exist, however, as contact
points for extension and research.
The objectives of the second phase were to:
• Increase the competence of the extension system to provide farmer
education that responds more effectively to local resources and conditions
through FSG
• Improve national and international communication between government
and nongovernmental organizations, extension, research, and farmer groups
through an IPPM newsletter
• Establish a national IPPM policy that prioritizes sustainable crop production
and protection practices and programs within government agencies
• Empower smallholder and marginalized farmers by improving their
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