O53 - Farmer-made agro-climate information services accelerate adaptive learning
2. Individual abstractsTam Thi Le1
1 World Agroforestry (ICRAF Vietnam)
Introduction
Farmer-made agro-climate information services accelerate adaptive learning
Introduction
Many Southeast Asian agro-climate services can be characterized as top down, with disruptions both between involved departments and between national to local level channels, and little feedback on what advise female and male farmers’ need. Furthermore, when agricultural advise exist, monoculture is often the norm. Changing these systems takes time and may require diverse strategies.
Methods
This presentation draws on implementation reviews of two agro-climate information services projects in Vietnam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Myanmar from 2014 to 2020. Combining fieldnotes, survey data with over 1500 farmers, and key informant interviews, we focus on “defining moments” that changed the mindsets of actors, from donors to farmers.
Results
Among those situations included round-table dialogues with meteorologists, agriculture planners, extension officers and farmer representatives about the indicators that farmers needed; and informal conversations where sensitive knowledge gaps were filled. Government officers actively involved in translating and evaluating forecasts and interacting with farmers in the field enabled feedback mechanisms. Participatory preparation of low-tech agro-advisories created social learning opportunities. Agro-climate services for a range of crops, packaged with other rural development activities, e.g. savings & loans associations and awareness events, allowed farmers to choose and self-invest in their preferred farming systems. This also promoted more efficient use of resources.
Conclusions
Among the conclusions: project designs towards adaptive learning gave the field implementers a flexibility to turn unexpected challenges into opportunities and respond to farmers’ changing needs, which enabled adoption and buy-in of vital actors. This meant changes to original plans that were impossible to predict at project proposal stage.
Looking ahead, we discuss with agro-climate services becoming privatized and tied to ag-input providers, can we ensure they meet the diverse needs of farmers?