| dc.description.abstract | Until recent years, professional attention has concentrated on improving
"our" analysis of farming systems. The challenge now is to document and
explore the scope for methods for enhancing farmers' own analysis.
Scientists and extensionists have informally been developing and using such
methods. Farmer participatory research (FPR) and participatory rural
appraisal (PRA) are complementary and overlapping sources of experience.
FPR methods are more verbal and observational, while PRA methods are more
visual. PRA methods include participatory mapping, analysis of aerial
photographs, matrix scoring and ranking, flow and linkage diagramming,
seasonal analysis, and trend diagramming. ViBual methods have strengths.
Farmers have a greater capacity to diagram and analyse than most outsiders
have supposed, and farmers are proving good facilitators of analysis by
other farmers. The professional challenge is further to develop, spread,
test and improve farmers' analysis through these and other methods. The
guestion is how. What are the next steps? | en_GB |
