“Key Informant Survey” of Production, Value, Losses and ... - DfID

It is proposed that each survey point interview 12 to 20 respondents. Full notes must be taken
of these conversations, whose usefulness is not limited to the bald replies to formulaic questions (see
below).
Key Informant Survey – Draft Question Set
- Position of respondent (e.g. farmer, extension agent, farm input salesman)
- In this area what are the main crops grown - area, production and prices?
- What are, in rank order, the eight most serious pests, and on what crops (including non-fruit-flyhosts)?
- What are the percentage losses of production to fruit flies if left uncontrolled, host by host?
- What is the incidence of local control practice(s), host by host (e.g. “10% of mango farmers use
methyl eugenol traps” or “Two-thirds of cucumber farmers spray insecticide”)?
- What is typical expenditure on local control practice(s) (e.g. “Most farmers spray cucumbers four
times with product X or product Y; each takes A man-days per hectare and costs B rupees”)?
- What are the percentage losses of production to fruit flies, with local controls, host by host?
- Overall, what do people think about the fruit fly problem and the controls available to them?
Key Informant Survey: Material Requirements
Notebooks, question lists and software
1.2.4: Semi-Structured Interview (SSI) Survey
For social goals, it is also important to establish to which social and economic groups costs and
losses fall, and what are the opportunities available to farmers and pest managers. Economic
considerations alone provide only a limited understanding of whether control recommendations will
actually be attractive and useful to farmers. Additional questions arise of farmer resources, opinions
and perceptions for fly management, and it is proposed to address these with a social-science-led study
of how control options are perceived, so that candidate technologies are evaluated following
considerations of farmer priorities, not ahead of them, and of the institutional and economic factors
which may enhance the acceptability, value, uptake and success of control technologies. The variety of
folkloric and other controls mentioned above will be acceptable and useful to farmers, or not,
depending on their match with farmers’ resources (access to cash for inputs which must be bought,
access to labour and information for controls requiring them), opinions (in some cases different
resources, for example cash, labour or information, may be to some extent inter-substitutable - when
so, which farmers will prefer to use will depend on their opinions and preferences rather than any
formal economic cost-benefit analysis) and perceptions (the desire to substitute low-chemical controls
for large-scale pesticide use may depend largely on farmer perceptions of pesticides as unhealthy or
unnatural and so requiring minimization beyond strict cost-benefit comparisons).
Farmer responses to fly pests may comprise nothing, cover sprays, bait sprays, lures, or some form of
Integrated Pest Management (IPM). There is a need to know what is done, the reasons for these,
their requirements for resources (such as access to sprayers) and economic and other costs
(particularly of pesticide use on health, beneficial organisms and the wider environment) and perceived
effectiveness and farmer satisfaction. This information requires supplementation by knowledge of the
social and institutional context of controls, in terms of support services and delivery of material inputs
such as pesticides and lures. Economic structures are important, providing farmers with access to
markets (traders, transporters, wholesalers and retailers) and with the products or services used for
pest management (pesticide and input manufacturers, importers, dealers and retailers, and contractors
providing pest management services). The role and behaviour of these impinging institutions will also
be considered.
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