Farmer-to-farmer extension facilitated by agricultural training institutions: A case of NERICA dissemination in Tanzania

Abstract

The Kilimanjaro Agricultural Training Center (KATC) extension approach has disseminated cultivation techniques for irrigated rice across Tanzania. KATC provides training to extension officers and key farmers (KFs). It also helps subsequent farmer-to-farmer (FTF) extension from KFs to intermediate farmers (IFs) and then to other farmers (OFs). The long-term intensive training for irrigated rice was greatly simplified for the dissemination of NERICA1 that was recently released for rainfed rice fields. While the original approach involves a 12-day residential training and a season-long field follow-up, the simplified one only provides a 2-day residential training. Here, we investigated the extent to which the simplified approach diffused NERICA1. The FTF extension worked almost theoretically from KFs to IFs but not from KFs/IFs to OFs over three cropping seasons. However, the number of OFs gradually increased with little intervention, suggesting that this approach should have some mechanism that encourages participation of OF from an early dissemination stage.