ESA_planning_review_2012_day2

=East and Southern Africa Annual Review and Planning meeting = toc ** Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge, ** ** Arusha, Tanzania ** Back to the event agenda page
 * 1-5 October 2012 **

=Day 2 - Tuesday 2 October=

Communication

 * Q**: Wow, impressive, but at the same time 'phew', how will I keep up with information?
 * A**: Dealing with emails and with information generally is difficult for anyone but we can work on it at three junctions: a) personally by defining how informed you need to be in relation with how centrally involved you are in the program + there are ways to deal with email overload. b) comms specialists should be there to make sure they know what is going on, help you come up with insights, results and stories (perhaps interview you) etc. and ensure that you are informed. c) at project and program coordination level, the management has to take responsibility to connect the dots and share information that matters to all of us.


 * Q**: Why do we need CG Space? Couldn't we put the items on the website?
 * A**: CG Space is the ultimate output repository and is meant to deal with information management in a robust way. From there it's easy to embed/feed all outputs into the website, wiki or anywhere else.


 * Q**: How do these tools work in low-bandwidth environments?
 * A**: They don't work so well, but usually when you need to find or upload a presentation/picture/report etc. you can do that in a higher bandwidth environment. The wiki can be used in lower bandwidth environments but it can be frustrating. It's probably better to take notes and report them back on the wiki when back from a trip.


 * Q**: Do you use GIS information?
 * A**: Not systematically now but we should think about it seriously for the future as we start research activities because FlickR, YouTube etc. easily support GIS data.

Research framework

 * Q**: You mentioned the choice of villages for treatment & control. Villagers communicate and learn about which village is benefiting and which one isn't. How do you explain to them?
 * A**: Budgets are limited so we have to choose who gets an intervention or not. If Africa RISING technology really works, it should be made available to everyone but we can only make it available for some and not for others. We have to find out how we can scale up/out...


 * Q**: How do we address issues at household level regarding selection?
 * A**: It becomes an intention to treat. I can select a village and give treatment to all but some may decide that they won't accept the treatment. By monitoring, we can separate out the eternal takers and eternal-non-takers. We can tease out and estimate with those monitoring tools who is likely to adopt etc. as opposed to participatory methodology.

--> We will also do some work at smaller scale, looking at e.g. integrated agronomics systems at smaller e.g. plot scale. --> What is critical is that we know our work is flawed.
 * Q**: The testing and research on multiple technologies that impacts crops, livestock, soil etc. is important. How does that fit into your design? How can that work for complex interactions?
 * A**: I have tried to simplify how it works. When you randomize, you actually randomize villages etc. but also look into markets, infrastructures etc. The Millennium Challenge Cooperation study looked at these components (roads, etc.) to consider other interventions that are happening. We could set the experimentation in another domain. We could factor in effects of those interventions together with our intervention or separately.


 * Q**: Participatory action research: there is a lot of awareness recently on action research, outcome mapping etc. using progress markers. In this type of research, how are we going to focus on changes rather than output changes?
 * A**: This will be addressed in the M&E presentation.


 * Q**: Trade-off hypothesis: We should think about household mapping for food security trade offs. It's not included here.
 * A**: Right now we're looking at productivity gains vs. environmental damage, but we also need to look at trade-offs between market use and household consumption. We could put more details to customize this hypothesis.

Monitoring and evaluation plan for AR
This is a difficult task because it's not completed and we've been working hard on it for the past 3 days.

Action site selection in the Tanzania maize-legume-livestock programme site
We need to work in integrated ways. //Additional presentation by Regis Chikowo//. We're working with NGOs (World Vision, Concern Universal etc.) so we can team up with them to cluster villages. Some of them are ready to move ahead with us.


 * Q**: Did you randomize villages?
 * A**: At district level we randomized but sections will also be randomized. This should happen shortly. Options with high potential.


 * Q**: What about Ntcheu?
 * A**: We've done something similar for Ntcheu


 * Q**: With M&E you'd like to have impact attributed but have to work with partners - but that's a challenging balancing act then. How to figure out how to address that concern and justify it for USAid? Do you need to do scientific monitoring to separate interventions? You are still developing technologies, how does that fit in your M&E approach if the technology is not ready to go to farmers? Do you do preliminary testing in other sites and do the main work in these sites? How do you do dynamic monitoring?
 * A**: It's more about how you present the project. How you technically report about the project is a different thing. USAid has some guidance on how to deal with attribution. We need to discuss this with the M&E team at USAid but we can sort out this issue of attribution without doing double accounting.

Comment: Mateete talked about action sites looking at elevation and rainfall but we also talked about market access and population density. --> We made our selection based on data available; market access data was not available then. In AR the assumption is that we have technologies in the CGIAR. We should avoid developing new technologies, demonstrate them to farmers and let them choose our technologies. --> You could expand to millet etc. Maize is not the only relevant crop. --> Maize is the best system. Even when you go for millet you find maize.

Comment: About market access: we could also decide to not look into sites with no market access. --> We don't have data for all aspects. When we do stratification etc. people say this doesn't match with what is on the ground. Non-responsive groups should not be included. How can we get data from e.g. Tanzania. --> We meet up researchers. Within 3 weeks we can't get all information but with collaboration on the ground with DALDOs etc. we will get enough information. --> For Kiteto and Kongwa there are lots of irrigated areas. We have maize, legumes, livestock, trees. We have a very broad spectrum. --> we were guided by the rice and maize value chain priorities of USAid missions. There are other crops in those areas and we work on integration to increase productivity. We should go to sites where millet is the dominant crop but this has been considered in the site selection. --> During the rainy season, some villages cannot be visited easily. --> It's difficult to get data for Tanzania about production etc. but we have a stat unit at the Ministry which has got some data. Data from that unit from 2003-2005 has been collected by different people (extensionists, trade people etc.) so some districts have been missed. Information about these districts varied greatly. --> One of the criteria for Kiteto and Kongwa was the proximity of markets.
 * Q**: In Kongwa we observed that sorghum and millet are dominant crops. Should we look into zero maize systems? Is it relevant for USAid?
 * A**: We should develop stratification based on all variables.

Presentation Lava about the challenges of intensification and scaling out

 * Q**: What you presented is important for biotic stresses but also for access to market. Our work is descriptive but we need some flexibility based on what we find when we get going. We can't develop everything now.
 * A**: When you read our program document, it states that we will provide for emerging issues as we are going on.


 * Q**: Are you aware of a group of people working on this new disease?
 * A**: Yes, we don't have to worry about this new disease but **we need to be prepared**. The task force we set up is only available in Kenya.

Comment: As CIMMYT we set up trials in hot spots and have some results indicating that we may have some resistance and tolerance for some of the exemplars we have. We will intensify that with IITA and we will screen large data sets. There are indications that the disease is spreading. Farmers told us that a disease that came up in Sept last year was exactly the same as this one. We are awaiting results about the spread of this dual virus outbreak.

Presentations of the challenges in the three ESA countries and their districts
Malawi (Ntcheu / Dedza), Zambia, Tanzania.

Zambia presentation

 * Q**: What about livestock?
 * A**: We have a strong livestock sector and many animals available (goats, pigs etc.) which have challenges related to diseases e.g. East Coast Fever but we have immunization campaigns.

Priority legumes are soya beans, ground nuts and beans. Ground nuts are not in the Eastern province.
 * Q**: Legumes are not a priority crop?
 * A**: Cow peas are not really a priority. They have been used before but at a very low scale. We need improved varieties and want to focus on productivity. Sorghum is more important. For cow peas, what matters is ?? We have some connection with the World Food Program which works on cow peas and we can interact with those other players.


 * Q**: Is there a market for grains now?
 * A**: Looking for higher production there might be opportunities.


 * Q**: We heard Zambia is leading but it seems that one of the challenges is the development of improved varieties.
 * A**: The main thing is maize. Some of the legumes such as cow peas etc. If farmers don't have soya bean seeds they want them. The soup we use doesn't mix grains and legumes. We have a lot of varieties but some farmers are far away.


 * Q**: Most challenging research issue for you?
 * A**: The challenges in Simleza are low productivity for crops. In livestock, diseases, for others institutional challenges. Soil erosion and crop productivity is a major challenge, low utilization of some varieties.

Tanzania presentation

 * Comment**: There should be an even balance between new crop varieties or improving the introduction process. Farmers want improved varieties or different crops. There is a demand from the farmers for new products etc. but we have to come up with an appropriate way to introduce these varieties.

--> Kiteto is where livestock is dominant but within districts there are villages entirely focusing on livestock. The amount of livestock is alarming sometimes, which leads to conflicts/tensions between crop and livestock. In Kongwa they have a more balanced approach.
 * Q**: What is the farmer system and how oriented is it towards crop or livestock?
 * A**: It depends. For Voromero there is more focus on livestock because of pastoralists. Most farmers do both.


 * Q**: Are the programs equally common among the 4 districts? Which programs are dominant in which district?
 * A**: In Babati, we have the overview.

--> We were working with sorghum and millet. Recently under an ICRAF project we went to Kiteto and Kongwa and saw that farmers received subsidies but didn't use fertilizers because we are afraid that we may not be able to access fertilizers. If we don't advocate for fertilizers the situation will be dire.
 * Q**: When we worked in Dodoma 10 years ago farmers refused using fertilizers. Is it because fertilizers do not work very well, we haven't given good examples of fertilizers, they haven't seen how it works?
 * A**: One of the reasons why they don't use fertilizers is the pricing. Even with subsidies, it remains expensive. The lack of knowledge by farmers adds up. Demonstration improves use.


 * Q**: Is there an effort for district officials to look into marketing and private sector involvement? Is there any effort to link farmers with markets by district teams?
 * A**: In Babati we started on storage facilities. We are linking marketing with farmers. We now started with warehouse systems.

Prioritization of the challenges
//Mateete Bekunda and Asamoah Larbi teased out priorities based on the country/district presentations and came up with the following list (issues highlighted in bold are the ones prioritized by DADOs)//:
 * **Seed** (tolerant to drought, pests and diseases, Improved varieties and diversification, Distribution systems)
 * **Soil fertility**
 * **Pest, disease and weed management**
 * **Agronomic practices** (Planting periods, Spacing, IPM, Mixtures, Pre-harvest technologies / planting and weeding)
 * **Conservation of natural resources** (Integrated Soil and water management)
 * **Post-harvesting** (Value addition & utilization, Agroprocessing equipment)
 * **Markets Access**, organizational, opportunities and niches
 * **Institutions** (Innovation platforms to strengthen partnerships, Farmer organizations, networks (conflict management)
 * **Livestock** (Management skills, Pastures and feeds, Health, Product processing, Breeds)
 * **Information and communication**
 * **Capacity building**
 * **Situation analysis** (Research Output 1


 * Priorities from the district agricultural development officers**:
 * Soil fertility and pest management
 * Soil fertility and seeds
 * Seeds and soil fertility

//Based on this, five groups formed to come up with a series of research questions, ideas and/or approaches to address these issues, to reflect upon research boundaries and principles and to integrate the lessons from jumpstart activities.//

Group 1
Group 1: Presenter: Harry Ngoma Comments:
 * **Seed**:
 * RQ: How do you make seeds of improved varieties available/accessible to farmers, especially for legumes, where private sector is not interested?
 * RA: Mobilize farmers to form farmer groups to produce seed, using the concept of Quality Declared Seeds (QDS).
 * **Agronomic practices**:
 * RQ: How can we improve the knowledge base for smallholder on agronomic practices?
 * RA: Test suitability of best bet practices weeding, labor saving saving technologies, IPM, pre-harvest and post-harvest technologies under different AgEconZones and different target groups
 * **Conservation of natural resources**:
 * RQ: How can natural resource management increase farm productivity under sustainable intensification?
 * RA: Participatory approach to diagnose to soil fertility problems and evaluation of solutions
 * RA: Participatory approaches to soil/water management based on landscape
 * RA: Participatory approaches to integrate leguminous tree and shrubs
 * RA: Promote the use of indigenous knowledge with scientific knowledge needed for adaptability to climate variability
 * RA: Validate simulation modeling on climate change and adaptation
 * **Post-harvest**:
 * RQ: What is the potential for smallholder adoption of improved post-harvest storage?
 * RA: Analysis and testing of selected post-storage technologies based on household objectives for storage (commercial purposes, household food security), as well as storage for farmer organizations or communities.
 * RQ: What are the best bets for agro-processing and utilization of legumes at the household level, especially for household consumption?
 * RA: Introduce and promote processing and consumption of grain legumes, using indigenous methods from throughout the region for preparing grain legumes
 * **Markets**:
 * RQ: How do you improve farmers’ ability to negotiate and successfully compete in markets?
 * RA: Engage with farmers’ groups and unions to develop their knowledge and information to develop market power
 * RQ: What key policy changes can be effected to improve farmer market opportunities, both within countries and across borders
 * RA: Economic analysis on opportunities and demonstrate results to policy makers.
 * **Institutions**:
 * RQ: How can we enhance the use the innovation platforms to achieve agricultural innovations?
 * RA: Along the value chain of targeted commodities, develop stakeholder groups in an innovation platform in order to empower and share knowledge of the VC
 * **Information and communication**:
 * RQ: What are the communication products and pathways to meet farmers’ needs?
 * RA: Development of a communication strategy that meets farmers needs and capacity, taking advantage of modern technologies (think communication products and uptake pathways), based on a needs assessment for different farmer categories
 * RA: Facilitate access to market information and tools to use that information.
 * **Livestock**:
 * RQ: How can the cropping system meet feed needs for livestock?
 * RA: Integration of crops, fodder and tree crops
 * RQ: How can intensification help farming communities to minimize the conflicts through land use planning?
 * RA: Work with communities on land planning associated with intensification
 * **Capacity Building**
 * RQ: How can intensification programs strengthen the capacity of key players in the value chain to better implement intensification?
 * RA: At farmer level, based on farmer typologies, train farmers on strategies for intensification.
 * RA: Strengthen capacity of extension and research partners, based a needs assessment associated with the technologies for the different AEZ.
 * For seeds, broaden to other sectors as well, not just QDS.
 * For post harvest tech, we could consider also commercial purposes.
 * We forget forage seeds + scope to broaden questions and incorporate livestock there.
 * How do we strengthen extension systems? à there are resources problems etc. The capacity to train extension should be there to ensure they collect information that is required.
 * Seeds: they only mention legumes but if we mention livestock we should also include forage seeds.

Group 2
// We used a different approach to set ourselves a target of 100 ideas. We couldn’t meet the target. 71 different ideas. We went through another exercise and ended up with 11 research questions. //
 * ** Soils ** : How to do characterization of soil health and rehabilitation of degraded soils e.g. soil fertility è characterization, GIS mapping.
 * ** Post-harvest ** : How to reduce post-harvest losses and improve quality of produce? è Link with aflatoxin, insect damage on field and during storage, while preserving nutritional value.
 * ** Markets ** : How do we improve on-farm value addition? Nutrition? Farm value addition processing: how do you cook vegetables? Socio-economic assessment of market chains, transaction costs, costs of transportation (represents sometimes up to 50% of value of produce).
 * ** Seeds ** : Improving seed system in formal and informal sector. è QDS, commercialization of released varieties. How do we compare formal seed systems with informal sectors? Look at models around various agroecological zones.
 * ** Livestock ** : How to improve fodder availability? Zero grazing. Emphasis should be on fodder, not on zero grazing. Understand conflicts of crop farmers and pastoralists? How do we understand pastoralists’ behaviours and their impact on crop farming?
 * ** Pests and diseases ** : How to improve existing surveillance systems? Give early warning systems (knowledge gap question).
 * ** Capacity building ** : Many options for extension agents, agro-dealers, public sector, NGOs etc. how can we build their capacity and how will it influence the quality of extension and linkages with farmers. How can we improve IPs and what role are they playing in getting our most desired messages across?
 * ** Knowledge and information systems / database ** : Lack of access to secondary data from DALDOs etc. so how can we improve these systems?
 * Issues like nutrition, gender (division of labour, around water, transfer of assets according to intervention) etc. cutting across, as well as M&E.

Group 3
Issues: Research questions
 * 1. Seed of crops and livestock **
 * Crops: Lack of basics and foundation seeds,
 * Forage: Production and access to forage and tree/shrubs seeds and planting materials
 * Nutritional value of available seeds (biofortification)
 * Develop systems to ensure sustainable supply of basic and foundation seeds of legume and cereals, forage seeds and planting materials to farmers.
 * Assess adaptability and performance of seeds/planting materials of crops, forage and trees/shrubs, relative to local variety.
 * What are policy interventions which can improve access of crops seed/forage and tree seeds/planting materials.
 * Research Approaches **
 * Demonstration
 * Participatory variety/species selection
 * Community-based schemes
 * Seed/plating materials multiplication and its different approaches.

Issues: poor soil fertility, limited soil moisture (drought), stocking rates, poor pasture management, access to water
 * 2. Soil and water and Natural resource management for SI of crop-livestock systems **


 * Research Issues/questions ** :
 * Evaluate nutrient and water limitation to productivity
 * To evaluate integrated technology to address nutrient and water limitations,
 * How do we sustainably manage pastures and stocking rates to optimize sustain soil productivity?
 * Assess severity of land degradation, identify the key drivers and suggest sustainable management options.
 * What is the impact of land degradation on productivity and food security?


 * Research Approaches **
 * Assess ex-ante best-bet technologies of nutrient and water management for their effectiveness (trials and modeling)
 * Assessing current stocking rate and use and management of pasture
 * Develop decision support system, which can guide land use planning and sustainable management options.

Issues:
 * 3. Pre-and Post-harvest Losses **
 * Loss of produce during growth, harvesting, processing and storage,
 * Infestation by storage pest
 * Contamination by mycotoxins
 * Reliance on human labour
 * Poor estimation pre- and post-harvest losses

Research questions/Issues:
 * What is the performance of different storage methods at the household level?
 * Which IPM options reduce pre-and post-harvest losses at household level?
 * What are the implications of labour availability and mechanization on pre-and post-harvest losses?


 * 4. Livestock **
 * Issues ** : Lack of food resources, health (diseases and pest), processing and marketing, and breeds.


 * Research questions/Issues: **
 * How do we sustainably support availability, management and use of feed resources by crop-livestock farmers on livestock productivity and links to markets?
 * What are the efforts needed to improve current animal breeds to enhance productivity?
 * How do we improve access to animal health and inputs services to increase productivity?


 * Research Approaches **
 * Rapid appraisal of key linkages with emphasis on application and feed supply, quality and appraisal
 * Use of tools for feed assessment, value chain analysis, rapid market appraisal and feed technologies prioritization.
 * To test and compare best-bet technologies in the target sites.


 * 5. Market **
 * Issues ** : Market information, low price, limited access to market, lack of value addition.
 * Research questions: **
 * How do we make sure that farmers have access to market information?
 * How do we support farmers to participate actively and exploit market opportunities (through market linkages)?
 * What opportunities exists for value addition of the major animal and crop products?
 * Does value addition increase the nutrition indicators of the community?

Group 4
USAid focuses on nutrition, NRM, policies and gender + FtF focus on characterization, systems, scaling and M&E. It’s all about system intensification.

__ Research approaches __ see above
 * Research questions ** :
 * Mycotoxins (field, storage, market)
 * Food quality and safety (pesticide, human pathogens, heavy metal) – stored food can also be contaminated. è Surveillance, detection methods, reporting, targeted interventions (practices, awareness, policies). This approach will address nutrition, human health, markets, gender, environment (sustainability). To include: M&E, scaling, capacity building, partnerships, regulation and policy, extension.
 * Soil conservation: how will they be conserved? Looking at small fields and soil characteristics are not well known.
 * IPM (integrated pest management): do farmers have knowledge/tech on IPM and are they compatible with SI and link with NRM?
 * Ensuring quality of inputs and seeds – do they ensure: reliability, regulation, suitability (market, environment, crop system), suppliers, waste disposal, knowledge/awareness
 * Market access and storage: processed or fresh? New markets: distance and type. Market creation – stimulation – How much is lost in this process (storage etc.) Processing of feed and food should be on board. We also need the feed chain è technology evaluation, tech demo, tech up-scaling, business skills, knowledge of market for food and feed (segmentation and access) à addresses gender, characterization, systems linked to food safety and drives SI.
 * Appropriate cropping systems: market, NRM + soil CA + IPM. Agronomic practices? è Crop diversity, farming systems (including system), IPM, NRM à addresses SI, nutrition, systems, weather irregularities, NRM, gender. Linked to food safety / storage / processing / inputs and markets.
 * Gender? A cross-cutting activity to all.
 * Resilience to climate change? Irregularities of weather patterns? Drought-resistance.
 * Integration of extension system: public, private, NGOs à PPP.
 * Policy and creating an enabling environment?

Inputs è knowledge/awareness, access (production, multiplication, supply), suitability (market, environment, cropping system), quality, policy & regulation à addresses SI, scaling, systems, gender, policies, NRM, nutrition, linked to food safety, storage and marketing Comment: most of this is related to food safety. There should be a strong linkage to regulatory system such as CPI etc.

Group 5
__ Research questions __ : Focus on a research approach. What are the potential technologies in the target areas?
 * How do we go about going into each HH at farm level to determine various intensification processes they would be interested in (CA, IPM, agroforestry etc.)…?
 * How do we determine what drivers of farmer preference are? That links back to the question about ‘how do we measure this?’ Which indicators thrive. How do we use them in TZ, Malawi, Zambia?
 * How does the integration of system and technologies work? Participatory action research looks into this. How effective is CA?
 * Scaling up question: how do we get to support mechanisms e.g. institutions, information delivery and farmer cooperatives/marketing techniques. Improved seed? How effective are these techniques to drive scaling up? Should we use these techniques rather than go through participatory action/research.

__ Approaches __ :
 * Q1 and 2 in a multi-stakeholder process fashion. For a specific area e.g. rice-growing area, discuss rice-based innovation with all stakeholders and what kind of options are available. Then discuss pros and cons of all innovations and use a priority-setting exercise for all stakeholders to rank what would be suitable innovation in their systems. You then come up with a researchable list of innovations.
 * Second step would target research Q 3 about how different innovations contribute to improve NRM, profitability, gender etc.: Do stakeholder participatory on-farm experiments to test the different innovations that came out. Take into account agronomic, socio-economic etc. considerations.
 * For Q4 we had a debate but perhaps a combo of survey and action-research on input delivery system.

Some of the things are the same: Different countries are at a different level with different issues. At seed system level nothing changes but some specific issues change in every country. We have all agreed to work at the same place at the same time. We just don’t know how. What makes AR unique is that we are demand-driven. I feel that AR does say ‘we’re here, we have everything and we want to work with you’. That doesn’t bring us to the point of new technology. We are working on putting it all together.
 * Final comments for the day **