1.

• Title: DISSEMINATION PATHWAYS FOR SCALING UP AGROFORESTRY TECHNOLOGIES IN WESTERN TANZANIA

• By: Peter Z. Matata

• Agricultural Research Institute- Tumbi, Tabora Tanzania

2. INTRODUCTION

• Agroforestry research in Tanzania has focused on the problem of soil fertility , dry season fodder shortage and fuelwood scarcity

• Simple innovations e.g. a new variety that overcome specific problems may be adopted relatively easily.

• Despite intense promotion, farmer adoption may be lower than anticipated because of many reasons

• To achieve greater impact, our strategy focused on working through existing government, non-government and other development organizations, and farmer groups

• It aimed at influencing partner organizations and their policies through networking, lobbying and collaboration.

• While collaborating with different partners, potential for successes and failures, and transaction costs are assessed to better understand the effective way of scaling up of agroforestry technologies.

3. AGROFORESTRY RESEARCH AND DISSEMINATION NETWORK

• Farmers groups in western zone was linked to the National Network of Small-Scale Farmer Groups in Tanzania

• The National Network of Small-Scale Farmer Groups facilitated coordination and streamline on-farm research, training, and dissemination

• The Network was expected to act as a catalyst and action-oriented group

• The benefits of networking are the people and organizations exchange information and share knowledge and skills that are difficult to get through independent works

• The Network has created a forum for organizations to share their knowledge, skills and assess the state of the art knowledge in Agroforestry

• The network meeting brought out that the most important constraints to wider adoption of technologies were limited awareness of agroforestry options, inadequate capacities of partners and farmers, and lack of access to germplasm.

4. Cont

• A major task of the network at each meeting was to plan for scaling up activities for subsequent season which included deciding on the type of activities and developing schedule of implementation.

• At the meeting, scaling up strategies were elaborated which including farmer - farmer training, field days, farmer exchange visits and establishing demonstrations and working with local chiefs

• The most outstanding feature of the Network has been its ability to provide feedback into the research process, enabling researchers to refine their experiments and designing new ones to answer the needs of the farmers and partners.

• This was possible through close interaction between researchers and partners during meetings

5. Objectives

• To review different dissemination pathways used to scale out agroforestry options in Western Tanzania and assess their relevance.

6. Study Area Tabora LOCTION: Western Tanzania Located: latitude 5 o S; longitude 32 o E; altitude 1190 m. above sea level within the miombo woodlands Area: 34,698 km 2 Pop: 1,717,908 Economic activities: Agriculture (Maize & Tobacco) and Livestock keeping Rainfall: Unimodal type of rainfall

7. Methodology and data sources

• The study was carried-out in five villages of Tabora Region:

The major reason for selecting these villages was that Tumbi/ICRAF had earlier made them focal villages for agroforestry experimentation . Data sources

8. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

• Farmer - trainers

• The failure of agricultural extension services to make an impact on the adoption of new technologies has stimulated interest in alternative approaches to extension

• Farmer participation in agricultural development plans is becoming a central issue of our time

• The use of farmer-trainers and local leaders as alternatives has been considered for reaching out more numbers of farmers effectively and in a sustainable manner.

• The use of farmer-trainers as a dissemination pathway requires that specialist in various aspects of the technology train selected farmers so that they can train fellow farmers.

9. Agroforestry specialist teaching farmers

10. Farmer exchange visit at Malolo village (2009)

11. Cont

• Seventy- six percent (76%) of the farmers felt that farmer-trainers were more effective for dissemination of improved fallows than government extension staff.

• They were the source of information on improved fallows to 43% of the farmers interviewed in comparison with the government agricultural extension officers who provided the first information to only 25% of the farmers.

• In spite of department of extension under the Ministry of Agriculture food and Cooperatives organizing radio programmes in Swahili language for four weeks, only 2% of farmers indicated the radio as their initial source of information on improved fallow

12. Initial source of information for farmers about improved fallows in the study area, western zone Tabora, Tanzania

13. Numbers of farmers per year who had come to know about improved fallow technology for the first time in the study area Western zone Tanzania

14. Cont

• The greatest strength of farmer-trainers is their ability to try out the technologies with farmers and to determine their ability to try out the technologies

• Farmertrainers have become more convincing to farmers than extension staff.

• In a monitoring exercise , it was observed that farmer-trainers who had prior experience of planting improved fallow on their own farms had influenced more farmers

• The use of the farmertrainers for dissemination is much more economical than government staff

• They can reach more farmers as they are widely spread out, even in areas where agricultural extension services have not been able to reach

15. Agricultural extension service

• Dissemination of new technologies has traditionally been the governments responsibility through the Ministry of Agriculture Food security and Cooperatives (MAFC).

• They are capable of disseminating agroforestry innovations

• However, lack of resources limited the work of extension staff.

• These limitations increase the time taken by them to pass on information on new technologies to farmers .

• .

• The survey conducted in Urambo, in Tabora region, revealed that extension staff experienced many constraints in their daily operations

• Reporting has become more routine task than addressing issues emanating from their work.

16. Local leaders

• The Network identified local leaders are being influential and capable in organizing farmer meetings .

• It is hoped that such gatherings could provide opportunities for disseminating agroforestry technologies.

• Our study, however, revealed that 78% of the farmers were against involving local leaders as forefront extension agents.

• The government extension staff and farmer-trainers could therefore collaborate with local leaders whenever they work and not necessarily involve them in activities that would jeopardize their authority.

• However, local leaders could contribute in disseminating improved fallows by themselves taking up the new technology so that their people under their leadership could emulate them with confidence.

17. CONCLUSION

• The ongoing work of on dissemination of improved fallows and other technologies in Tanzania emphasizes the importance of communication, training, extension and follow-up research.

• The formation of the Network, frequent meetings and workshops involving all the stakeholders superbly served the purpose of achieving greater scaling up.

• The agricultural system in Tanzania is faced with many challenges, foremost being its inability to meet the demands of the field staff due to limited budgets.

• Farmer-trainers work towards building local foundations such as groups and associations, which will allow them to continue pursuing AF

• We conclude that farmer-trainers are very effective in dissemination of agroforestry innovations. The Network provided a forum for participatory evaluation of on-farm research, and act as catalyst and action oriented group

18. Thank you all "asante sana"