In this section we welcome all your experiences in working directly with the end-users of arthropod and microbial biocontrol agents or in educational activities on natural enemies aimed at students, farmers, extension staff or policymakers.

Lessons on FPR from Vietnam

A major difference between FPR (farmer participatory research) and the traditional top-down model of extension is that through FPR farmers learn to solve their problems rather than being told what to do. For scientists and extension staff engaged in FPR, facilitation skills are as important as technical ones, yet they are rarely trained in how to communicate with farmers. New ways of improving communication between all FPR participants have been piloted as part of the latest phase of a project to improve disease management in Vietnam, funded by ACIAR (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research). This article highlights two of the approaches developed and tested in the CABI Bioscience-led project, and is concerned not with what gave most effective disease control but what improved the process of finding out.

Letters to Mother

Writing reports is probably the least-favourite activity in any project. The problem is particularly acute in FPR, as most of those involved, and particularly farmers, will have little or no experience of expressing their ideas about it on paper. CABI Bioscience FPR specialists have developed a novel method* to help all those involved to write about their participatory research activities more easily.

The answer does not lie in teaching farmers to write like scientists. The scientific style does little to help people who are usually reluctant to write in the first place - the flow of words slows and ideas struggle to emerge. Instead, farmers are encouraged to imagine that they are writing to their mother (or someone else close to them). By creating a familiar situation - explaining what you have been doing to someone you are used to talking to - the barrier is lowered. Another advantage of this approach is that people write in the language they find easiest to use. Translations can be done later, and once the scientists have the 'letter', they can analyse it for key points.

To summarize what happens, people are asked to imagine that they are writing home to describe what they have been doing. This is usually done in groups, and the time taken has varied from about 20 to 45 minutes. The idea behind the scheme is to get people to relax, to provide just enough information to explain what happened and to reveal some of the pain and pleasure of their work. Writing can also be participatory, which helps all involved to learn more about what others are doing and how they approach their work.

A simple scheme is to ask writers to explain in their 'letter':

• What things went well and why?
• What things didn't work and why?
• How would you improve what you did?
• What results did you obtain?
• What are you planning to do next?

The 'letter' approach was used not just by farmers, but by facilitators and teachers - extension staff and scientists - to express how they felt about what they had been doing. This provided input, for example, from all participants on experiments conducted in farmers' fields, which gave useful insights into how the views of farmers, extension staff and scientists varied, and how these changed as the research progressed (whether or not the experiments were a 'success'). The 'letters' did not always give adequate detail, but they did convey a sense of what happened. A refinement suggested by the report authors is to extend the activity so that the trainers write back as 'mothers' asking their 'offspring' to tell them more, perhaps to explain some events that are not clear, while providing encouragement by saying how pleased they were to hear about what they had been doing.

One aspect of traditional report writing remains: the letters need to be done on the spot, and people have to be encouraged to write them, or they become another chore to delay or ignore.

FPR is still at an early stage of developing a menu of successful methods. The 'Letters to Mother' approach simplifies the reporting procedure, but also gives important insights on what happens when researchers collaborate with farmers.

Looking at Interviews

Talking to farmers is a key skill for anyone engaged in FPR. Yet extension staff and scientists - even social scientists - have little if any formal training in conducting interviews. They need to acquire this skill if they are to be able to find out what farmers are doing and why they are doing it. Some have a natural talent for interviewing but others underestimate the difficulties of obtaining information from farmers and using this to jointly develop new approaches. Good interviewing skills include asking the right questions, listening in the right places and then responding as researchers, plant protection officers or extension workers to help the farmer do better. How can these skills be taught? To explore one approach, an 'Interviewing farmers' exercise was included in a one-day workshop on communicating research outputs to farmers, held in My Tho in March 2004.

The pilot exercise centred on studying a series of photographs that showed farmers being interviewed. Workshop participants were asked not to try and guess what was being said or discussed, but to treat the images as a stimulus for considering what happens during interviews. Various photos had clues suggesting that the interview was going well, or not, but participants were asked also to think about general events that happen during interviews. Suggestions included thinking about a similar experience: a photo of people relaxing at a farmer's house after visiting her fields might lead them to discuss whether, in a similar situation, the participants had learnt something new about what the farmer was doing. Another photo showing a large group of visitors to a farm could lead to discussions about whether the size of the visiting group affected how easy it was to find out about the farmer's problems. Yet another illustrated visiting scientists talking to each other and almost forgetting the farmer was there.

Although participants seemed hesitant at first, they began to suggest how the interviews could have been improved. Holding an interview is a crucial tool in the basket of methods used in FPR. The photo sheet method piloted here will not transform a participant into an expert interviewer, but it is a potentially quick method for helping to demonstrate some of the pitfalls and problems encountered when talking to farmers - and it encourages people to think about what happens when they conduct an interview.

*The idea was suggested by Dr Tom Preece, PhD supervisor to Eric Boa, when the latter was writing his thesis.

Contact: Paul Van Mele or Eric Boa,
CABI Bioscience UK Centre, Bakeham Lane,
Egham, Surrey TW20 9TY, UK.
Email: p.vanmele@cabi.org/e.boa@cabi.org
Fax: +44 1491 829100

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Natural Methods for Rice Blast Control: Farmers' Experiences

Blast caused by the ascomycete fungus Pyricularia grisea (sexual stage: Magnaporthe grisea) is a severe disease in paddy (rice) growing areas in India and can cause heavy damage under favourable disease conditions. It has been found that a single 'spot' can disseminate at least 5000 spores to a healthy crop under such conditions. This success story shows how tribal farmers in Andhra Pradesh were able to control the disease by using locally available resources.

Prabhatnagar-Reddigudem is a village in the Paloncha mandal of Khammam district, Andhra Pradesh. Every year in this village they grow paddy on up to 1200 acres (485 ha). The amount of money they spend per acre for plant protection is very high while productivity per acre has been decreasing year on year. In 2003, the farmers experienced severe blast on all 1200 acres. They do not have access to Department of Agriculture information and they did not know what to spray. Instead, they approached the local pesticide dealers who are the pest management advisors in the villages. They recommended the costly fungicides tricyclazole, propiconazole and edifenphos, but even spraying these chemicals did nor allow the farmers to control the disease. At this point, the farmers came to hear about non-pesticidal management (NPM) practices that were being followed in the neighbouring village of Punukula. They approached the farmers there, who advised them to approach CWS (Centre for World Solidarity), a premiere NGO based in Hyderabad, which is promoting this form of sustainable agriculture in five Indian states.

CWS advised them to prepare and spray a mixture of cow dung, urine and asoefetida on their fields. The mixture was prepared using 5 kg cow dung, 5 litres cow's urine and 250 g asoefetida for each acre to be treated and fermenting it for 5 days; 100 g/acre lime powder (calcium chloride) was added to the fermented mixture before it was sprayed on the fields. Most of the farmers adopted this practice and successfully controlled the disease. The farmers said that the cowdung-urine-asoefetida mixture not only arrested the spread of the disease but also initiated the growth of new tillers. They recorded an increase in yield of 4–5 quintals (400–500 kg) with this method.

By: Zakir Hussain,
Centre for Sustainable Agriculture(CWS),
12-13-445 Street #1, Tarnaka, Secunderabad-17,
Andhra Pradesh, India.
Email: zakirhussainhyd@yahoo.com

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