Improving Farmers’ Livelihoods through Multi-Stakeholder Innovation Platforms for Linking Smallholder Farmers to Research, Extension and Business Development Services

The project will utilize a resource-to-consumption framework that works with the whole value chain from natural resource management to production, marketing and consumption, which brings together the necessary actors, information and innovations that are required at each stage along the value chain. The approach will focus on linking technology development to markets and on strengthening capacity of smallholder farmers to organize and articulate their demand for improved technologies. The project will use an Innovation Platform approach to build capacity of research and extension staff to apply participatory approaches for working with farmers. The approach has six key steps (i) Engaging appropriate research, development private sector and farmer organization partners along the whole value chain, (ii) Participatory diagnosis with farmers that combines a livelihood assessment and prioritization to focus on constraints to production and marketing, (iii) Formation and/or strengthening of farmer research and farmer market groups, (iv) Participatory market research to build capacity of farmers and organizations in markets and developing agro-enterprises, (v) Participatory development, testing and promotion of technologies for increasing productivity and competitiveness of the value chains (vi) A participatory monitoring and evaluation, information dissemination and scaling out strategy. The project will use a learning alliance methodology for building capacity of research and extension staff to apply participatory approaches for working with farmers.