Integrating FPR with conventional on-farm research programs: an example from Botswana

This paper may be of interest to government policy makers and planners, NGO rural fieldworkers, agriculturalists and economists. The paper describes the application of Farmer Participatory Research (FPR) in Botswana. FPR is viewed as being most useful as a complement to more traditional on-station and on-farm farming systems research approaches. Its goal is to incorporate farmers more directly into the process of technology development and application. The paper describes the success of the incorporation of FPR into the research programme at Francistown, Botswana. The success of this synthesis is seen to lie in the final structure being shaped by local cultural norms.