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Assessing the quality of participation in farmers' research groups in the Highlands of Kabale, Uganda

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Title Assessing the quality of participation in farmers' research groups in the Highlands of Kabale, Uganda
29 p
 
Creator Sanginga, Pascal C.
Lilja, Nina
Tumwine, Jackson K.
 
Subject participatory approaches
gender
 
Description In recent years, there has been increasing interest in farmer research groups (FRG) to catalyse farmer
participation in research, and to widen the impact of participatory research. However, there is dearth of
systematic empirical studies that evaluates the quality of participation in FRG. Using empirical data from a
sample of 21 FRGs in Kabale, Uganda, this paper investigates what types of participatory research
occurred at the different stages of the research process, how farmer participation occurred, who
participates in FRG, what are the factors that determined farmers' participation in FRG, and what criteria
should be used in monitoring and evaluating the performance of FRG. Results showed that the types of
participation were more of functional consultative and collaborative types, but varied in the different stages
of the research process as farmers were increasingly taking on more roles and responsibilities. Results
showed that farmer participation in FRG tend to follow a "U" shaped curve, with high participation at the
initial stages of the process, followed by dramatic decrease as many farmers drop out from the groups, and
slow increases towards the end of the first seasons. Similarly, there was a significantly higher participation
of male farmers at the beginning of the process, compared to women. However, as FRGs progressed, the
proportion of men decreased while the relative proportion of women increased dramatically to reach about
67% of farmers in mixed groups, and 24% of the FRGs were women only. These results suggest that FRG
proved to be a more effective mechanism to involve women and the resource-poor farmers in research who
would otherwise be bypassed by conventional approaches. The results of the Logit regression model
confirmed that the probability of participating in FRG was higher for women compared to men, and that
there were no significant differences in wealth circumstances between FRG members and the rest of the
community. We argue that FRG as an approach has a great potential for catalyzing the participation of
farmers as partners in research and development activities. However, this requires significant support and
personal commitment of researchers to broaden the scope of FRGs from a functional consultative type to a
more collegial empowering type, and from variety evaluation to broader natural resources management
research and other developmental issues.
 
Date 2001
2016-06-08T23:57:23Z
2016-06-08T23:57:23Z
 
Type Working Paper
 
Identifier Sanginga, Pascal; Lilja, Nina; Tumwine, Jackson. 2001. Assessing the quality of participation in farmers' research groups in the Highlands of Southwestern Uganda. CGIAR Systemwide Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis, No. 19. Cali, Colombia: CIAT.
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/75647
 
Language en
 
Relation CGIAR Systemwide Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis
 
Rights Open Access
 
Format application/pdf
 
Publisher International Center for Tropical Agriculture