Growing People From the Ground Up: Lessons Learned From Working With Smallholder Families in the Developing World.

The task of finding a way to disseminate effective agricultural practices to smallholder farmers is a challenge on many fronts. This report highlights some of the lessons we have learned by working with farmers in the developing world. Lesson 1: The need for Mutual Respect. We initially went to help with the attitude of “We know what your problems are and how to solve them. Do this…” By working with farmers, we learned to change this way of thinking and start looking at life through their eyes. It’s as important to grow the person as it is to grow the crop. Lesson 2: The target audience may not be whom you think it is. At first, we assumed it would be most effective to teach the fathers.  However, we learned that mothers and in many cases, the older children were more receptive and willing to try new ideas than fathers. This forced us to reevaluate what we taught and how we taught it. Lesson 3: Show, don’t tell. Hands on lessons in the field are retained better than anything taught in a classroom, for trainers and farmers.  Lesson 4: Lend appropriately, don’t give.  The more free handouts you give, the more damage you do. Having a ‘payback’ component builds responsibility and self-esteem. Lesson 5: Know what the problem is…first. Understanding the problems and taking baseline statistics combined with appropriate practices, enables us to make a real, measurable difference. Conclusion:  To make a tangible impact, we need to understand the problems in depth, find duplicable solutions and teach appropriately.