cases from tanzania - Sustainet

Documentation and communication
PELUM-Tanzania: Networking for sustainable agriculture
Documentation enables smallholder farmers and development organizations to share their
experiences: successful technologies and approaches, as well as failures. Farmers have many
traditional practices and have developed innovations that have not been documented or shared
with others. Because development organizations are focused on their day-to-day activities,
they often omit to document what they have done and learned, so risk losing this valuable
knowledge as key staff move on.
Activities
PELUM-Tanzania’s country desk runs a documentation and resource centre in Dodoma.
The centre gathers information on sustainable agriculture initiatives, advocacy and lobbying
activities in Tanzania and elsewhere. It makes this information available to member organizations,
farmer groups, partner organizations, students, the government and the public. People
can come to the resource centre to read and exchange information, or they can get the information
through visits, discussion forums arranged by PELUM-Tanzania, emails, leaflets,
newsletters, and the PELUM Association’s bulletin and its magazine, Ground Up.
The resource centre has a large number of publications, reports, CD-ROMs and other
documents, many of which are not available anywhere else. The centre is a key resource for
member organizations, partners, farmers, and the public.
PELUM-Tanzania’s quarterly newsletter, called Kilimo Endelevu (“Sustainable Agriculture”),
contains articles about good practices in sustainable agriculture, agricultural marketing, policy
advocacy issues, seed and food security, experiences in community development, planned
events, farmers’ local innovations and news. The newsletter is meant to enhance information
exchange and distribution, networking and sharing. Most of the articles are by farmers
themselves. Two thousand copies of each issue are produced. Member organizations receive
60 copies of each issue at cost.
PELUM-Tanzania publishes various books, booklets, brochures and leaflets about various
aspects of sustainable agriculture, lobbying and advocacy techniques, genetically modified
crops, and so on. These publications are written for smallholder farmers, public and decision
makers. They are published in English and Swahili, so both partners and smallholder farmers
can understand them. Some publications are distributed free of charge, while others are sold
at a subsidized price so the intended readers can afford them, but part of the production
cost can be recouped.
Results
This documentation and communication work keeps member and partner organizations
informed about issues related to sustainable agriculture. PELUM-Tanzania has studied various
policy documents, popularized them and translated some into Swahili for dissemination
to member and partner organizations and farmers’ groups.
New projects in 2003 and 2004 included initiatives to promote food security and local innovations.
The Kilimo Endelevu newsletter is an important way of disseminating information within
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