Cartoon by Misael Cerna, VSU, Leyte, Philippines

First of all, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my readers. I hope you enjoyed your holidays. On Christmas Day, I thought it is fitting to write about scaling up since everyone seems to be in a “give cheer to everyone” mood. There are contentious issues related to scaling up such as how many beneficiaries should we aim for in scaling up and be able to claim impact? Will reaching 20 farmers in a district constitute scaling up? I have dealt with these issues in various trainings, workshops, symposia and conversations and I shall tackle them in this blog in future posts.

While a range of terms are used (e.g., technology promotion, technology transfer, scaling up, scaling out, delivery) the main idea behind each is to bring the benefits of an improved practice to a wider set of beneficiaries. To promote adoption of an innovation, the following framework will help partners arrive at clear statements of the desired change, the target audience, variables to be monitored and methods to measure them, expected consequences of the impact, and the approaches to be adopted.

1. Understand farmer needs, problems, and decisions

Talking to a rice farmer about his use of the leaf color chart, Tien Giang, Vietnam

An important first step is to identify farmers’ needs, perspectives and the way they see the problem through focus group discussions (FGD), interviews with various stakeholders, and other diagnostic tools. A wide range of methods are available, such as consultations with stakeholders, focus group discussions, seasonal profiles, matrix ranking, mapping, problem tree, and in-depth field interviews. This analysis will provide important baselines, help identify intervention opportunities and further research needed to solve the problem

2. Evaluate available technical information and “distill” or simplify them “heuristics” that can be tested easily by farmers, and motivate them to evaluate through farmer participatory research.

3. Review farmers’ evaluation, modify, and design intervention through a participatory process with initial stakeholders.

4. Develop communication strategy in a participatory workshop with stakeholders.

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