Project News

Mr Koyama, short-term expert's work completion report meeting was held!

On 1st March 2022, a work completion report meeting for Mr Koyama, short-term expert was held. As a short-term horticultural expert, Mr Koyama is dispatched to Kenya from 15th January to 4th March to support the facilitation of FT-FaDDE (Facilitators' Training for Farmers' Demand Driven Extension) training for county agricultural extension officers, monitor in-field training for farmer groups, and propose improvement points of trainings and materials so that the county government as the main body of agriculture extension will be able to implement and expand the SHEP Approach sustainably and effectively.

At the meeting, Mr Koyama presented three main proposals. The first is the promotion of technical training based on the needs of farmers. Besides the adjustment of training content according to the crops selected by the farmer groups, the Project will collect the detailed farmers' needs from existing information and utilize them for in extension activities.

Specifically it was suggested that, for the 20 agricultural production practices confirmed in the baseline survey, more emphasis should be place on the practices with low farmer adoption rates (= farmers' weaknesses / needs) and the sub-county agricultural officers would analyze the problem map created by the farmer groups for each selected crop and extract the core problem of each crop. The Project will include a session in which extension officers discuss how to solve the challenges identified by the farmer group in the FT-FaDDE training.

The second is the timing of the crop calendar making. Currently, farmers conduct market survey, select crops, and then create a crop calendar through in-field training. The farmers have to wait about two months after market survey & crop selection for making a crop calendar since market survey and crop calendar making were explained in different training. By introducing the crop calendar making together with market survey at JEF2G training, it would be possible to formulate a concrete crop production plan at the time of market survey & crop selection when the farmers' motivation rises dramatically. In addition, by creating a crop calendar at an earlier time, it is expected that the county extension officers will be able to customize the schedule of in-field training based on the crop calendar.

The third is the revision of the FT-FaDDE training program and teaching materials. In order to avoid one-way lecture and to increase the teaching methods that can be used by extension officers at in-field training to interact with farmers, utilizing video materials on crop production practices and showing actual products such as high-quality seeds and real sample of fertilizer are suggested. In addition, inserting a table of contents in the soft data of the training materials and setting a link to the target page was proposed so as for extension officers to easily access the necessary information in the field using a tablet.

Our counterparts (officers of the Ministry of Agriculture) commented that all proposals are indispensable for improving the technical guidance on crop production by extension officers, and that the Project will put them into practice in the training for the 2nd batch counties. The counterpart in charge of crop will play a central role in making necessary preparations based on the proposals by Mr Koyama.

Mr Koyama's work completion report meeting

In field training which Mr Koyama participated in