Assumptions

The main assumptions underpinning the study were that:

• Strong and active farmers’ organisations are key institutions that bridge the gap between farmers, public research and extension bodies, government institutions and international donor organisations in making agricultural technology development more effective and relevant to farmers
• Factors in each country’s policy environment can either contribute to or inhibit effective linkages between farmers’ organisations

Questions

The research focused on the following key questions:

• What can we learn about the importance of farmers’ organisations in improving farmer access to appropriate technologies?
• In which contexts have farmers’ organisations been effective in making agricultural service providers more demand driven and therefore making servcies more relevant to farmers’ felt needs and complex livelihoods?
• What factors in policy and institutional environment limit farmer participation and the degree to which agricultural services respond to farmers’ expressed needs? Are certain features of these contexts essential to achieving fruitful linkages? (e.g. free market economy; laws giving official recognition farmers’ organisation needs…)?
• Where have there been successful linkages between public research and extension services and farmers’ organisations?
• From these cases what can we learn about factors which contribute to the development of linkages between research, extension, farmers’ organisations and their members, and about factors which work against the development of linkages?

Case studies

Sixteen case studies were carried out in five countries (The Gambia, Ghana, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Guinea) by a multidisciplinary research team. These were identified through the National Agricultural Research Institute in each country in most cases and sometimes through NGOs (for example, ActionAid The Gambia) or through. An additional study was commissioned for Nigeria. The research methodology was consultative, using semi-structured interviews at local and national level, with policymakers, farmer representatives and farmers, in groups and as individual. Stakeholder workshops were held at local, national and sub-regional level to discuss issues and results.