Capacity Building Activities Through Participatory Approaches

The Participatory Technology Development (PTD) Process

AME works by involving farmer groups, village organisations, NGOs and development staff in the field, in the PTD process. It also associates, at appropriate stages, the research specialists in the region. The process involves problem identification, consideration of available options, action planning and implementation, assessment of gains and short-comings. The activity requires proper preparation of participants to handle various tasks. It is usually a season-long activity including group work, field training and field days. Agronomic and production data on experimental and control plots are regularly collected and fed into a computer database. Later the data is analysed and the results shared with farmers, NGOs and others interested. The results are discussed in the crop based working groups. The understanding thus generated becomes the basis for training, training materials and future field testing.

PTD is an ongoing process. New problems are identified as they emerge for experimentation and the proven technologies evolved over three or four crop seasons are taken up for application and propagation.

Beginning in the year 1997 with 270 farmers in two districts, in collaboration with 12 NGOs, the PTD process has gradually involved nearly 1900 farmers in 29 districts in association with 180 NGOs. AME identifies those who are part of PTD process as participants and those reached through them as secondary adopters. The modest growth in the number of farmers, includes the secondary adopters (10,300).