The use of volunteer farmer trainers has more than doubled volumes of milk sold. But how do you get them to stay?

Milking it: dairy farmers in east Africa are earning more by learning more

The concept of task shifting is often associated with community health workers. But the idea is equally applicable to other sectors – such as farming – and recent research into volunteer farmer trainers (VFTs) shows how lessons from community health worker schemes have informed the effectiveness of using farmers as agents of change.

The research into VFTs has been based on their use in the East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project, a collaboration launched in 2008 between Heifer International, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Technoserve, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and African Breeders Services (ABS). The project's first phase aimed to double the incomes of 179,000 dairy farmers in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.

Volunteer farmer trainers are an integral part of the EADD, designed to augment the over-stretched formal extension system.

"In Uganda for example, we have an estimated 4 million smallholder farmers served by 4,000 technical extension workers," says William Matovu, Heifer's country director.

"So one extension worker is serving a thousand smallholder farmers. The only way we can support the system is by ensuring we have robust communities with farmer trainers."

Volunteer farmer trainers are initially trained in feed and feeding systems on an intensive, two-day course, and they then train fellow farmers in their immediate community, usually other members of a dairy group. The training includes the growing of livestock feed crops and feed conservation techniques such as silage making, hay baling, and management of crop residues.

Trainers use demonstration plots on their own land, but on average, each volunteer farmer trainer also reaches five villages outside of their own, travelling mostly on foot and covering up to 4 miles a day.

Between 2009 and 2012, the volume of milk sold by farmers involved in the EADD increased by 102%, and in June this year, an in-depth study into the VFT programme was published, analysing the motivations of its participants.

This understanding is important because research by organisations including the World Health Organisation has identified high rates of attrition as one of the key challenges in community health worker programmes. Recommendations made by WHO on how to mitigate this include ensuring a robust selection system, some kind of incentive, ongoing training, and a system of recognition.

This thinking has been embedded in the VFT scheme. Recruitment of volunteer farmers, for example, is a community-based process based on criteria presented by both EADD and the community itself.

"The community makes the decision with our input," says Steven Franzel, principal agricultural economist at ICRAF and co-author of the report.

"They have to be resident in the community, be dairy farmers, and interested in helping others. Literacy is often one of the requirements, depending on how the community feels."

Perhaps the most important finding of the VFT study was that while income generation wasn't the greatest factor in motivating farmers to sign up (other motivations included altruism, social factors and access to training) it did become a key factor in retention. Farmer trainers have found they can earn income from selling planting materials or providing training services – for a fee – to people from outside their immediate community.

This benefit may be contributing to the relatively low levels of VFT attrition.

"We've found 80% of trainers have been retained," says Matovu. "The strategy for retaining them has been based on financial incentive mechanisms and preparing them as entrepreneurs for knowledge and information sharing and technological transfer within communities."

The EADD showed that there are limitations to community-based training.

"It doesn't work everywhere in every circumstance," says Franzel. "One example is low population areas, where people don't get around enough and don't have transport. The second is with relatively high-risk complex technology. We deal with feed technologies, where the costs of making a mistake are relatively low."

The key message from the VFT study is that volunteer trainer systems can work, but to be sustainable they need to be carefully structured to give something back to the trainers. Entrepreneurial opportunities are a motivator, and so is social recognition and exposure, which can be achieved through certification and even branded T-shirts and caps.

Given the importance of smallholder farming in the developing world, the potential of farmer trainers is something we cannot afford to ignore, says Franzel.

"It's been way underexploited. Funds for public extension have seen huge cuts over the years, partly because they weren't performing well, so we see this as a model that both empowers local communities and can be very effective."

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