International Journal of Applied Agricultural Sciences

Special Issue

Effectiveness of Farmer-to-Farmer Information Sharing on Dissemination of Agricultural Innovations

  • Submission Deadline: 10 March 2020
  • Status: Submission Closed
  • Lead Guest Editor: Putri Ernawati Abidin
About This Special Issue
The development of the agricultural technology has existed since the dawn or agriculture. Farmers could improve their skills and knowledge mostly from meeting or talking with fellow farmers, or through the local knowledge of cultural inheritance. In the last few years, theories of change and scaling were introduced to support the monitoring, learning and evaluation of whether research outcomes are meeting the objectives or vision of a project. There is evidence that farmers like to copy successful projects implemented in their areas and are willing to adopt it when they think it can benefit them. The seeing-doing-believing principle would be most likely applied to farmers in adopting new technology. Actually, this positive behavior of change of farmers together with their willingness to spontaneously help in the process of technology scaling still need attention by extension programs, NGOs and development planners. This is worthy of study as this farmer-to-farmer approach can be a low-cost element of scaling efforts, particularly in the case of new introductions of technology innovation packages. Our recent studies in Ghana and Burkina Faso on sand storage of sweetpotato, an innovation package of technologies for scaling, measured farmer-to-farmer information exchange in the scaling of this technology. The project asked trained farmers as beneficiaries, to become scaling champions, although there was no funding available to support their down-stream effort. We assessed the effectiveness of this approach as part of our learning and evaluation of the project. The results indicated willingness of farmers to scale out the technology and generated valuable information which can be used for the future efforts. There is a need to take specific factors into consideration in designing projects for scaling using farmer-to-farmer approaches at low/basic, intermediate, and widespread scaling should emphasize the importance of the technology or innovation being promoted.
This special issue is to document farmer involvement in the dissemination and scaling of innovations in agricultural practices, technologies and innovation packages. Original research papers are solicited on any aspect of innovative agricultural research and technology scaling using farmer-participatory approaches, including gender aspects of such efforts. Exploration of superior local-specific knowledge would be considered among the topic in this issue.
Aims and Scope:
  1. Agricultural innovation technology
  2. Agriculture, nutrition and health
  3. Farmers-to-farmers information or talk
  4. Farmers institution and community development
  5. Supply chain analysis of agricultural products
  6. Dissemination and training
Lead Guest Editor
  • Putri Ernawati Abidin

    Department of Agriculture, Non-profit NGO, Reputed Agriculture for Development, Wageningen, Netherlands

Guest Editors
  • Edward Ewing Carey

    Department of Horticulture and Natural Resources, K-State University, Manhattan, United States

  • Kwadwo Adofo

    Department of Root & Tuber, Csir-Crops Research Institute, Kumasi, Ghana

  • Prince Maxwell Etwire

    Department of Socioeconomics, CSIR-Savanna Agricultural Research Institute, Tamale, Ghana

  • Didiek Goenadi

    Indonesia Research Institute for Biotechnology and Bioindustry, Bogor, Indonesia

  • Satriyas Ilyas

    Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, Bogor Agricultural University, Bogor, Indonesia

  • Suleimane A Adekambi

    University Institute of Technology, University of Parakao, Parakao, Benin