Learning objectives

Learning objectives for the collaborative effort include the following:

Farmers’ knowledge and practices

1. Inventory local beliefs/knowledge about the causes of soil fertility decline and remedies for restoring degraded soil.
2. Explore local beliefs/knowledge about which crops and which management practices are suited to which soils and why.
3. Inventory farmers’ ideas about practices with the potential for enhancing soil carbon content.
4. Assess participating farmers’ baseline management practices and soil health test results.
5. Analyze interventions chosen by farmers for testing on their own farms, assessing possible influence of location, gender, and baseline soil test results.

Workshop effectiveness

1. Evaluate farmers’ and facilitators’ opinions of workshop content, structure, and activities.
2. Modify workshop content, structure, and activities to enhance learning.

Development outcomes and effectiveness of approach

We will assess

1. Whether the interventions result in visible and/or measurable improvements to crop and soil performance.
2. Whether our approach improves development outcomes over the short and longer term.
3. How the approach influences the ways farmers adapt practices or develop new ones.
4. Whether the social nature of the learning influences individual and collective action and deeper learning among those involved.
5. Whether having a nucleus of research farmers within a community leads to wider spread of related knowledge and practices to others within their community.
6. The costs and benefits of various strategies for promoting farmer-to-farmer learning (e.g., cluster meetings, virtual sharing, farmer exchange visits, workshops, etc.).