A Framework for Assessing Adoption Potential

Franzel et al. (2002) in their overview of methods for assessing agroforestry adoption potential, mentioned that conventional approaches to technology generation in the 1960s focused almost exclusively on biophysical variables such as a new crop variety’s potential to increase yield per hectare. While this has been quite successful for fairly simple technologies and under homogeneous biophysical circumstances like irrigated rice fields of Southeast Asia, the biophysical approach has proven insufficient for the more complex, variable and subsistence-oriented farming systems of Africa. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, farming systems research emphasized the need to determine adoption potential based on priorities and circumstances of farmers (Byerlee and Collinson 1980). During the 1990s the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) and other organisations devoted much effort to the design and testing of on-farm research methods, with an explicit view of understanding adoption potential. Assessment of adoption potential was evidenced to be multifaceted, requiring an understanding of biophysical performance under farmers’ conditions, profitability from the farmers’ perspective and acceptable to farmers (Franzel et al. 2002).

On-Farm Assessment of Biophysical Performance (Franzel et al. 2002)

In order to assess the biophysical performance of a technology on-farm, products and services of technologies are measured and compared among different options (also called treatments). The most difficult issue in on-farm trials is to ensure that the comparisons made are representative of those that farmers would make. Another issue that needs to be taken into consideration is the need for long-term monitoring to be able to assess the biophysical sustainability of different practices. It involves identifying key elements that will be needed over the long term to ensure that the practice will remain feasible, profitable and acceptable to farmers.

Assessment of Profitability

Franzel et al. (2002) divide profitability issues into three categories. The first category considers whether the financial net benefits of the new practice are greater than for alternative practices, including those that farmers currently use. Second, it is important to assess the variability of benefits across farmers and seasons, and the sensitivity of the results to changes in key parameters. Third, benefits are appraised relative to total household income in order to assess their potential for contributing to improved household welfare.

Greater financial benefits may arise through increased biophysical productivity or through reduced input costs. To this end, partial budgeting (Alima and Manyong 2000), a technique for assessing the benefits and costs of a practice relative to not using the practice, is often employed, especially for those practices that have limited impacts on the costs and returns of the enterprise as a whole. It takes into account only those changes in costs and returns that directly result from using the new practice. Net returns to farmers’ production factors (land, labour and capital) are calculated by extracting purchased inputs from the production value.

by attributing the remainder to the other factor. This permits a calculation of the net returns to land, which is relevant for farmers whose most scarce resource is land, and the net returns to labour, relevant for those who lack labour. In evaluating agroforestry practices, data for a single period are usually inadequate. Therefore, cost-benefit analyses, also called investment appraisals, are developed for estimating resource inputs, costs and benefits over the lifetime of the investment.

Assessment of Feasibility

Farmers’ ability to plant and maintain agroforestry technologies depends on three factors: available resources (land, labour and capital), whether they have the required information, experience and skills, and whether they are able to cope with any problems that may arise. Feasibility of a technology is also dependent on its perceived value. Tools for assessing feasibility of a practice include:

- resource budgets (comparing availability of resources with the needs of the practice; e.g. labour requirements);

- evaluation of general biophysical performance of the technology, e.g. survival rates of seedlings planted, amount of biomass produced, etc. and;

- informal or questionnaire surveys with farmers about the problems they experienced whilst implementing the trial.

Assessment of Acceptability

Acceptability includes profitability, feasibility and a range of criteria that are often difficult to quantify, such as risk, general compatibility with farmers’ values and farmers’ valuation of benefits. One way of assessing risk may be through sensitivity analysis (Alima and Manyong 2000), which assesses the effect on net present value of changes in key parameters, such as prices of inputs and outputs, changes in input-output coefficients and changes in discount rate, as influenced by farmers’ time preference and ability to manage risks (Izac 2003). By appraising the effect of likely future market patterns on these sensitive parameters, the economic sustainability of the practice can be evaluated.

Another way of assessing acceptability is asking farmers whether a practice was acceptable, but according to Franzel et al. (2002) this is generally not very useful. Rather, acceptability is best ascertained by monitoring whether farmers continue to use and even expand their use of a practice, and whether neighbouring farmers take it up. However, Franzel et al. (2002) argue that using expansion or adoption as a proxy for acceptability may not necessarily give a realistic view either. First, in some cases, farmers may be interested in expanding but unable to do so because they lack access to critical information or inputs (seeds). Also, agroforestry technologies take a long time to evaluate and farmers generally need to experience a full cycle of a technology before deciding whether to continue using it.

Methods for assessing biophysical performance, profitability, feasibility and acceptability of improved fallows and vegetative propagation units are described in Chapter 3. Results are presented in Chapters 5 and 6.

In Chapter 5 we assess the biophysical performance of tree and shrub fallows using crop and tree data derived from long-term on-station and on-farm trials. We examine the profitability of tree and shrub fallows over a 10- and 6-year period, respectively. Continuous monitoring of on-farm trials and farmer surveys permitted to assess their feasibility.

Chapter 6 highlights factors affecting plant production in farmer-managed nurseries with a view of explaining the biophysical performance. Chapter 6 also presents the results of the profitability analysis of such nurseries and a summary of problems that farmers face in practicing vegetative propagation.

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Ann Degrande, Zac Tchoundjeu, Steven Franzel and Jacques Kanmegne

‘Experiment is the rational foundation of all useful knowledge: let everything be tried’

Anthony Young, 1767 (cited by Pretty, 1996)