AeD-LABs: Intercambio de experiencias Ecuador -Colombia. Guangaje, mayo 2023. Credits: Courtesy Daniele Conversa, farmbetter.

 Objectives

• Make farmer innovation for climate change adaptation visible and accessible to others and create spaces where they conduct trials, exchange knowledge and showcase their research results and innovations for climate change adaptation (Agroecological Adaptation LABs).
• Provide instruments for the exchange of innovations between communities who face difficulties in similar ecosystems, including through the farmbetter mobile extension app and WhatsApp.
• Strengthen farmer-led research to strengthen early-stage innovations through farmer led research designs, experimentation, relevant capacity-building and collaboration with researchers.
• Scale-up innovation in fostering the recognition of innovations and inventors. Put the innovations into practice through collaboration with farmers’ organizations, extension services, policy-makers and investors or donors.

Type/size of farms and type of food products: family farms, size around 1-5 ha; used to produce mainly potatoes, maize (corn), beans, vegetables and currently also produce products based on medicinal plants, cattle and small livestock.

Activities

• Conduct a survey among 110 participants in the 3 countries in 2023.
• Assess survey results:
  • Main climatic issues on agriculture according to survey’s participants were water scarcity, drought, winds and degraded soils.
  • Main solutions identified were planting (agroforestry, reforestation, crop diversification and native species), seed banks to protect native seeds, and water management practices (management water infiltration, setting up water reservoirs, water supply, organic composts).
• Farmers defined the term innovation:
  • Innovation is the “process of creating a new product, production process, service or management model that solves a specific problem” IICA, 2023.
  • Innovation is a newly introduced process, product or service
  • Innovation is a process, product or service from another place or which is rediscovered/preserved or that helps adapt.
  • Besides, innovation is not always conscious (It can arise by chance; it can be a discovery), it is supported through research process (verification), it solves issues (related to climate change), and it is a dialogue process – exchange – posture.
• Identify what constitutes a maturation process of an innovation: An innovation starts to be implemented by a niche group, then SWISSAID supports farmers through agroecological labs so that they can undertake farmer-led research to do trials and errors around this innovation and decide whether it should be spread out further or not. Then, farmers reach out to the community to encourage them to implement the innovation as well. During this phase, it is important to get more academia and researchers onboard and do more research elsewhere with other farmers. Once the innovation shows positive, scientifically backed results in clearly described, different contexts, it can be scaled up in other ecosystems facing similar problems. The app is helpful in this regard.

• Identify the first sets of innovations:
  • Greenhouses to control temperatures
  • Newly discovered crops to enhance soil fertility
  • Rescue native seeds via seed banks
  • Temperature and rainfall monitoring to help people to take better decisions about when and where to plant which crops
  • Agroforestry systems to help soil recovery and other ecosystem services
  • Nutritional supplements for animals to have a better production.
• Collaborate with partners from the start, such as the respective farmer organizations, governmental and extension services, research organizations.
• Organize in-person workshops to foster farmer-led research.
• Develop didactical material on climate change risks and options for action (leaflets ,via the app, via videos – enlace al video¸ use the radio).
• Co-develop the farmbetter extension application to suit farmers’ needs and to enable innovation and knowledge exchanges via Whatsapp. The app has four key functions:
  • Communication with facilitator/extension agent (or a lead farmer) via WhatsApp for those who have a problem to solve
  • Upload farmers’ innovations into the application to share these with others
  • Control panel for quality assurance regarding the innovations
  • Database and library for those who want to browse WOCAT good practices on sustainable land management and climate change adaptation.
• Forum / webpage (coming soon) to be able to communicate with the wider community of researchers, policymakers and donors or investors.

Effects and Impacts

Evaluation methods

• Quantitative: actual direct and indirect beneficiaries of the project, and the number of innovations uploaded- and downloaded, are retained via the application.
• Qualitative objectives are monitored by the extension agents/facilitators via the different workshops (e.g. quality and satisfaction with the farmer-led research process).

Lessons learned and results

• Progress so far: 40 innovations to be uploaded by the end of 2024. Additional innovations researched and ready by end of 2026.
• Farmers are very interested in researching their innovations further and sharing them via app.
• The project invests in creating easily understandable content on the one hand AND the digital literacy of the communities on the other.
• Partners such as farmers’ organizations, NGOs and extension services welcome more efficient communication with the smallholder families, including on climate change adaptation.
• A financial mechanism which compensates farmers when an experiment goes wrong, helps maintain farmers’ willingness to invest in innovation.
• Identifying innovations and researching them more systematically requires prior co-creation processes within the communities and with research organizations willing to engage in farmer-led research.
• Longer follow-up time is required to see long-term effects of innovations on climate change mitigation and adaptation.
• Lead farmers and/or extension agents are key in the set-up for the knowledge exchange to be working: their didactical proportioning and sharing of WOCAT solutions via app and WhatsApp, and especially their technical inputs via app and WhatsApp regarding farmers’ innovations helps farmers work innovations and problems efficiently. However, this requires a careful selection of any new members of this lead farmer/extension agents’ group and may make scaling slower.

Limitations and barriers

• Connectivity issues in remote locations complicate the project’s outreach via app and WhatsApp. We are currently considering investing in offline technology.
• Financial means are key for the farmers to be able to respond to losses and damages due to climate change and to apply the developed solutions at larger scale in order to prevent future losses and damages.
• By the end of the project in 2026, AeD LABs should reach communities, extensionists and research partners in partnership to overcome potential barriers to sustainability.
• Establish horizontal co-creation of knowledge processes between researchers/academia and farmer-researchers to change the paradigms of conventional research and implement effective participatory action research processes, recognizing the local knowledge of the communities.

Yeny Carillo, SWISSAID, y.carrillo@swissaidcolombia.org

Sonja Tschirren,  SWISSAID, s.tschirren@swissaid.ch