190 Participatory Processes
challenges without requiring project intervention (Röling and de Jong, 1998).
With a better understanding of the agroecosystem and familiarity with the experi-
mental method, farmers build up their confidence in their own knowledge, learn-
ing capacity and decision making capabilities. Field staff who work directly with
farmers have no doubt that the programme does achieve this other objective. Yet
this is a difficult entity to quantify.
There are signs that, as a result of project intervention, farmer innovation is
taking place. Some participating farmers moved beyond the ‘prototype techniques’
and adapted them to suit their own needs. For example, there are farmers now
experimenting with the cultivation of shrimp instead of, or together with, fish.
They develop their own knowledge by studying shrimp production by larger pro-
ducers, asking questions and using their neighbours and other members of the
group as a source of knowledge. Whereas the programme focuses on the use of
common carp – an exotic but easy-to-rear species – as the fish species of choice,
many farmers are producing native species, including some that are endangered.
The same is taking place in vegetable dyke crops where farmers are trying vegetable
species not associated with the programme. Some farmers have taken the vegetable
crops and planted them around the homestead or along roadsides and the same is
true for trees originally intended for dykes.
Another indicator of empowerment is the level of organization and collective
action. Some FFS, independently of project staff, have formed formal grassroots
organizations. The potential impact of these organizations is great and the pro-
gramme will study their development as a first step towards enhancing this proc-
ess. Already, some farmer groups have taken collective action in marketing their
products. Others are producing fish in large areas made up of a number of adjoin-
ing individual fields in which fish fingerlings are jointly procured and from which
returns are shared among the group.
Within the FFS, farmers experiment and compare their results. They observe
and monitor other farmers’ fields where organizations have already installed dem-
onstration plots. FFS participants are better able to evaluate new technical options
presented by agricultural researchers or extension services. They are also more crit-
ical of proposed new technologies.
The project is also contributing to the empowerment of women, who in rural
Bangladesh are confined to the household and kept away from sources of power.
The project encourages women to work away from the homestead in the rice field.
One survey showed that two-and-a-half years after the project’s departure, 74 per
cent of them were still tending vegetable dyke crops and all of them were involved
in rice–fish culture (n = 1200 responses). Farmer leaders, half of whom are women,
receive additional training and subsequently serve as resource people in their com-
munities. Such women often report a newly acquired sense of worth and enhanced
social status. Some of these women have been elected to the local government.