This article describes the adaptation of the matrix scoring technique to investigate local perceptions of agroecosystem properties - productivity, stability, sustainability and equity. Methods discussed include transects, mapping and modelling, matrix ranking of productivity, and matrix ranking of the productivity of different crop combinations, seasonal calendars and timelines.
This article describes a recent innovation in the use of venn diagrams called a farmer's flow diagram. The flow diagram is used to illustrate the farmer's strategic choices about inputs that he can make to the farming process.
This paper presents a number of methodological innovations on RRA and PRA in the context of food security. It is interesting in the first instance because it reviews work done as a follow-up to a PRA workshop on household data collection for food policy needs. On the method front, there are examples of mapping, diagramming, ranking and how each method feeds into food policy decisions. An increased use of visual methods is highlighted, and the connected increase in participation in and ownership of the research by local people.
The United Mission to Nepal (UMN) Animal Health Improvement Project (AHIP) has been training Village Animal Health Workers (VAHW) in Pokhara, Nepal for the last decade. During this time approximately 350 VAHWs have been trained. This article outlines some of the techniques that were used to evaluate the subsequent progress of the trainees. General village-level information was gathered using various participatory methods, including mapping, wealth ranking, production information, labour diagrams, proportional piling and annual disease calendars, transect walks and progeny histories.
The Policy Alternatives for Livestock Development (PALD) project aims to facilitate the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy in the extensive livestock sector which dominates the Mongolian rural economy. This report outlines some of the participatory research methods which were used during the training of the Mongolian research team. The methods described include wealth ranking, participatory mapping, transects, ranking of grazing resources, and seasonal calendars showing production, climatic variations, incidence of disease and labour requirements.
Wealth ranking was one of the methods used in the early stages of a collaborative research and training project in Mongolia. It served two main purposes, direct and indirect. The direct purpose was to identify locally important criteria for distinguishing households according to wealth, status and power. It was also used to stratify the populations of the sample production brigades, as a first step towards understanding differences in the ways richer and poorer herding households managed their herds, gained access to key natural resources, and responded to risk.
It is widely recognised that farmers, like agricultural research scientists, are experimenters. Yet in general farmers' research has been ignored by the scientific community. This study was carried out by researchers at the International Typanotolerance Centre (ITC), to investigate local livestock-related innovations in two sites in the Gambia. Semi-structured interviews were used to elicit a range of information regarding livestock management.
This project employed a variety of qualitatative and quantitative techniques in order to better understand customary land-use systems in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Researchers used cartographic maps as a tool to get villagers to mark their resource-use land boundaries. A global positioning system and a geographical information system were also employed and the results processed by computers. The researchers are thus able to produce a map of areas of overlap and overlay between village, nature reserve, forest concession and forest land-use maps.
Discusses an ENDA project working on community woodlands, where community theatre was used to stimulate discussion on the local forest resource. Group discussions focused on the woodlands, trees and changes in the forest over time. There was agreement that there were few trees, and that they were declining in number, due to drought, overpopulation and mismanagement. Constraints and potential solutions were identified. There were few gender differences in awareness.
Developed from an "experiential learning exercise" in Agro-ecosystem mapping held at Rajendra Agricultural University, Pusa, this book could form the basis for a training programme on the following mapping methods : map of typography & hydrology, map of enterprises, map of social groups and transect of agro-ecological zones. Section A describes the training programme with the emphasis on field exercises covering the above methods.