Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture Practices in ... - Horizont3000

3.1.4 Competition within the groups
During the time of rotational labour pooling and visits to the members‟ farms, group members
realised that there was diversity of implementation levels at the different homes they visited.
This coupled with the setting of implementation standards triggered competition.
Exposure visits to successful farmers from previous MADDO programmes inspired farmers to
try and do better, thus triggering competitions within the groups. One farmer of Bigando
Group said: “Visiting each other we observed new things and ways of implementing SA
practices and thought we could challenge ourselves to do better.”
Different groups had different ways of organizing competitions. All group members were
involved in planning for the competitions and agreed on the processes and rewards systems.
Competitions within the groups resulted in:
more cohesiveness within the group
increased farmers‟ desire to excel
farmers copying new ideas and sharing during the competition
improved adoption of SA practices by the farmers
uplifting of weaker members as they worked hard to avoid being left behind
Some groups have become models to others, have competed and won prizes awarded by
Rakai District Local Government which has motivated them to work even harder. Two groups
were privileged to be visited by the Rakai District Chairperson due to their outstanding
performance.
3.1.5 Training before input support
Inputs provided to groups included improved banana varieties [„mpologoma‟], drought resistant
cassava cuttings and sweet potato vines for food security and agro-forestry tree seedlings. Hibreed
goats and pigs were given to groups to enable farmers rear an animal and obtain dung
used for manufacturing organic manure.
The approach of training farmers in SA practices before providing input support was initiated
by the WASIP team. Beneficiary farmers agreed to this approach as they said it helped to
eliminate those farmers who wanted to receive inputs without putting an effort to learn the
required SA practices. They however mentioned that, some of the inputs could be given during
the training but also acknowledged that inputs such as livestock farming required more time
for training before to enable farmers adequately prepare to adopt the practice.
Crop and livestock input support stock was provided to the entire group as common property.
Farmers would agree on the way to share the livestock offspring, applying the pass-on-a-gift
system. Crop support to the farmer group would be used to establish a mother garden, where
the members would subsequently pick the planting materials for propagation.
Group ownership of the resources caused cohesion among group members.
3.1.6 Use of farmer trainees before electing and training CBEAs
The WASIP team applied a community entry approach by training two farmers per groups
selected by the groups themselves in SA concepts. The two farmers would then disseminate
the concepts to the rest of the group members.
This served to assess the training-of-trainers approach.
Once groups had a better understanding of the programme and the criteria for selection of
their trainers, then selected the CBEAs. Having been exposed to the magnitude of the training
work undertaken by the two farmers, groups managed to develop criteria for selection of future
CBEAs. In the same line potential CBEAs were exposed to the future tasks.
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