Farmers' workshops as a tool to evaluate watershed management projects : an account of experiences and problems in South India.

As a part of a research project, farmers involved in a project using a "participatory " approach and those from a project adopting a more "top-down" approach to developing soil and water conservation measures visited each others project sites during a farmers workshop. Observations from the farmers arising from the visit confirmed a positive relationship betwen a participatory planing and implementation approach and a sustainable project impact. The authors suggest that farmers workshops of this type are useful evaluation tools and should be incorporated into ongoing project activities to enable incorporation of suggestions arising.