Highlights from the Crisis Response Initiative in Eritrea
This document highlights the main results of activities funded by IFAD’s Crisis Response Initiative (CRI) in Eritrea.
Despite decades of research and development of technologies and innovations which improve farming practices and productivity, small farmers in Tanzania continue to use technologies and practices which do not favour high yields and economic returns. The Agricultural Sector Development Programme–Livestock (ASDP-L) and the Agricultural Services Support Programme (ASSP) were implemented in Zanzibar, Tanzania to increase agricultural productivity and profitability, generate employment in rural areas, and ensure food security by facilitating farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing of best practices.
The projects trained selected facilitators from each local community in new techniques of livestock rearing and crop production, who then demonstrated these techniques to farmers through Farmer Field Schools. Farmers were actively engaged in learning, problem solving and promoting the new techniques.
The ASDP-L Farmer Field School curriculum concentrated on livestock rearing, including artificial insemination, calf rearing, linkages between farms and markets, and delivery of services from veterinary and animal health workers. The field schools run by ASSP were tailored to crop producers, training them in organic farming, land preparation, soil fertility maintenance, use of manure, and erosion control. They also promoted planting of highly nutritious crops. An end line impact assessment of both projects was conducted using qualitative and quantitative data from 2,082 participating and non-participating households.
Key impact estimates
An impact estimate is calculated as the difference in mean outcomes between the treatment group (project participants) and the comparison group (non-participants).
Through these projects, more than 28,000 rural households learned new farming practices in 1500 Farmer Field Schools across nine districts, leading to the following positive impacts:
Main lessons
This joint impact assessment of the Farmer Field Schools approach to rural development provided the following lessons:
Resources