When asked by researchers, most farmers in the village of Teteuri in Luwu Utara Regency in South Sulawesi Province said that they were not familiar with agroforestry as a name but agreed that they had actually been practising it for a long time. They also said they needed to learn more about agroforestry.
These were some of the answers presented during a monitoring and evaluation process conducted in April 2022 using the Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement (ADKAR) method by a team of researchers from the Sustainable Farming in Tropical Asian Landscapes (SFITAL) action-research programme, which is led by World Agroforestry (ICRAF) Indonesia in collaboration with Mars, Incorporated and Rainforest Alliance UTZ.
The team interviewed randomly selected farmers who had joined training courses in Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and agroforestry in 2021.
ADKAR was used to obtain information about farmers’ understanding, desire, knowledge and ability to apply GAP and agroforestry on their land as well as their need for support to overcome problems that arose in implementing what they had learned in the training.
Between July to December 2021, SFITAL had held GAP and agroforestry training with 528 small-scale farmers in Luwu Utara Regency. Some 106 farmers were interviewed about the GAP training and 101 farmers about the agroforestry training.
From the interviews, agroforestry topics that farmers wanted to know more about included how to select commodities to grow in an agroforestry system; spacing of the plants; and how to apply GAP with various commodities.
Farmers also told the interviewers of the common obstacles they faced in managing their land and that they expected some solutions from the SFITAL project. The team promised further facilitation and training through the creation of pilot plots created and managed with individual farmers, farmers’ groups and staff of Mars, Incorporated.Â
By Desiana Zulvianita and Tikah Atikah