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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.

Refering to a previous article, which attempted to assess the accuracy of various relatively rapid means of stratifying a rural population in Bangladesh, this paper argues that that exercise was somewhat premature. Little progress can be made toward improving the efficiency with which succeeding generations of fieldworkers conduct their enquiries, until more is known about the way in which existing practitioners have divided their time and the considerations behind these allocative decisions. The paper offers an account of how a stratification of a rural population in Bangladesh, in the course of fieldwork, was carried out.

The paper deals with the subject of participatory modelling. It asks how such a process can portray a picture of a community that does not merely reflect the view of the dominant group. The paper reports on efforts to compensate for the effects of an often dominant group - men. While on a training course in northern Omo, Ethiopia, a group of women and children were asked to make their own model on the ground adjacent to the men. The issue of water availability, a subject not brought up the men, appeared to be key. As result, the paper concludes by highlighting the need for participation to encompass all groupings within a community.

A report which was sent back to landholders in Kyeamba, NSW. It documents the findings of a days RRA work, a follow-on from a more extensive PRA excercise in 1991, examining perceptions of Landcare, its activities and its structure. It is found that landcare, which attempts to enable a community as opposed to individualistic approach to controlling envioronmental degredation, is reasonably well respected and attended in the area. However, many feel that erosion and other land constraints are 'someone else's problem'. There are questions over the misallocation of funds, the allocation of the co-ordinators time, and the degree to which they listen to many of the farmers, as well as the future of Landcare.

This paper presents examples of how farmers' diagrams put farmers' ideas and knowledge first in on-farm research priority setting, experimental layouts, and integrated farming-system design. Although they concern the integration of aquaculture and agriculture, these procedures are just as useful for those wanting to integrate agroforestry, livestock, or any new enterprise into the farming system. It advances the idea that farmers' diagrams can improve field methods in on-farm research. Qualitative methods are directed at putting farmers' ideas first, increasing the number of farmers able to participate, and orienting technology testing to farm-system levels. The paper illustrates how farmers' diagrams can help put farmers' ideas about on-farm research priorities, experimental layouts, and integrated-farming-system designs first.

The paper reports the results of a survey of 41 practitioners who where asked to report on the methods they were using on their projects, and the reasons for their success or failure. Most importantly this conventional approach to farming systems research failed to incorporate the experience and knowledge of farmers into its survey design. It is concluded that simple research questions can often provide the needed information in order that technologies useful to resource poor farmers are developed. [Abstract based on mimeo version]