approach to Rural Development

Most developing countries face an increasing demand for food. The agricultural sector thus continues to be of great importance for food security and rural economic development. However, both the proportion and the total amount of funds allocated to agriculture in official development assistance declined dramatically for two decades from themid-1980s (OECD, 2010) partly as a result of failed rural development interventions.

However, both the proportion and the total amount of funds allocated to agriculture in official development assistance declined dramatically for two decades from themid-1980s (OECD, 2010) partly as a result of failed rural development interventions.
These failures were primarily due to poor understanding of agrarian dynamics and a tendency for donors to seek ‘one-size-fits all ‘extension approaches. This decline has only recently come to a halt and there has been a renewed interest in different agricultural extension approaches. Rural Initiative for Participatory Agricultural Transformation (RIPAT) is one such approach, facilitating the adoption of new technologies among small scale farmers, which deliberately takes its starting pointing the fact that one-size does not fit all. It has been developed, implemented and refined in partnership between the Rockwool Foundation and the Tanzanian

NGO RECODA

NGO RECODA through a six year learning by-doing process. RIPAT is a pragmatic mix of traditional and more recent participatory extension approaches,  such as Farmer Field Schools. It introduces a varied ‘basket of technology options’ to farmer groups over a three years implementation period, leaving each farmer with a genuine options to which technologies to adopt depending on needs and resources.