PROJECT ASSESSMENTS - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 143

ceremony marked the end of the involvement of the facilitators, but the starting
point of the continuation of the farmer-led FFS.
A one-day policy workshop was organized in each District to share the results of
the FFS approach with stakeholders and District level policymakers, resulting in an
action plan to facilitate implementation of the FFS approach.
About 6 months after the graduation ceremony, an impact assessment was con-
ducted by the facilitators to evaluate the contributions of the FFS approach and the
conducted activities in the FFS towards a sustainable improvement of livelihoods of
small-scale farmers in target areas in general and towards sustainable soil fertility
management practices in particular. The assessment included both a longitudinal
(comparison before and after joining the FFS) and latitudinal comparison (com-
parison between farmers of FFS and farmers not members of an FFS). The impact
levels, target areas, target groups and tools used are summarized in Table 1.
Discussions with all FFS members were organized individually and during a FFS
meeting. A sample of 30% of the number of the FFS farm households is selected of
which half from within the village and the other half from the immediate surroun-
ding villages. Purposive sampling is being done with similar average resources (land
size, no. animals) as the FFS group.

Table 1. Characteristics of FFS (standard deviation in parentheses)

Kiambu Mbeere

Kibichoi Ngaita Munyaka Kamugi

Number of farm households in FFS 30 12 30 29

Number of household members 6.3 (2.4) 5.4 (2.1) 6.5 (1.8) 6.6 (2.1)

Average area cultivated (ha) 0.8 (0.5) 0.5 (0.2) 1.2 (0.8) 2.1 (3.1)

Tropical livestock units (TLU) 4.0 (5.1) 3.0 (4.5) 1.1 (1.7) 1.8 (1.8)

Family earnings ($ farm -1 halfyear -1 ) 395 (569) 156 (517) 189 (150) 48 (220)

Off-farm income ($ farm -1 halfyear -1 ) 241 (352) 128 (261) 96 (147) 39 (68)

Off-farm income (% of family earnings) 61 82 51 81

HH below poverty line (%) 80 67 100 97

Market orientation (% of produce sold) 52 46 22 31

Distance to market (km) 6 5 11 9

1 US$ = Ksh 75
Poverty line = 1 US$ person -1 d -1

D) General project outputs

The project has implemented 11 Farmer Field Schools in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia
reaching about 310 farming households who represents the larger farming com-
munities. An FFS curriculum on INM was developed in each of the participating
countries. The project has made extensive reviews of the FFS methodology and how
it could be adapted to INM in east African region to provide insight into oppor-
tunities and constraints for implementing similar methodologies elsewhere. Analysis
of sustainability of East African farming systems using NUTMON methodology has
revealed that soils are degraded and that crop yields and farm income are low. For