Highlights
- The TMG Think Tank TSG model is an alternative farmer-to-farmer knowledge diffusion approach. It is based on a network of community-based agents, locally referred to as «Tem Sesiabun Gorado».
- The model aims to ensure effective knowledge sharing and sustainable farming technology diffusion from project beneficiaries to communities.
- Including women and men equally, as community-based agents have proven to reduce gender imbalances among farmer-learners across generations of learners.
About The Tem Sesiabun Gorado technology diffusion model in Benin
In most African countries such as Benin, sustainable land management (SLM) technologies have been promoted by using various project extension approaches, including farmer’s training, visits, demonstration plots, and workshops.
These approaches are targeted based on biased criteria that tend to prioritize wealthy, progressive farmers, often known by extension agents as early adopters, excluding smallholder farmers, in particular women and youth.
The Tem Sesiabun Gorado (TSG) model is a farmer-to-farmer technology diffusion model that seeks to overcome conventional extension approaches, in particular with respect to accountability mechanisms and sustaining the motivation of farmer trainers.
Lessons learned from the model implementation
- The number of farmers reached expanded – the model reached out to 1055 new farmers, 38% of them women, across the two villages.
- Farmers’ networks extend project reach – ownership to communities has proven to stimulate farmers’ social responsibility, accountability, and self-initiative. This empowers farmers to activate their networks.
- Women’s leadership reduces the gender gap among trained farmers – assigning leadership roles to women is likely to increase the number of women among the project’s indirect beneficiaries.
- Making use of farmers’ capacities increases effectiveness – transferring responsibility for the diffusion process to farmers proved to be more effective than conventional approaches to the promotion of SLM technology.
- Self-sustaining production increases post-project sustainability – providing seed inputs to farmer-learners encourages participants to establish their own seed stock reducing the communities’ dependency on external funding.
