Farmer Research Networks Approaches to Serving Communities
Lead Organization:
IDEMS USA
Partner Organizations:
Partnerships in the Kenya AE Hub
Community of Practice:
Duration:
1/2025—5/2026
Overview:
A 2018 planning grant launched the Kenya Agroeoclogy Hub Community of Practice, a diverse group of mostly grassroots organizations that agreed to engage in joint research activities, learning how to use FRN approaches to develop an evidence base of effective agroecological (AE) practices. At the same time, Manor House Agricultural Centre (MHAC) was also designated as the “Anchor Hub”, the physical home base for the Kenya AE Hub.
In the intervening years, Beth, along with Elizabeth Dyck and David Stern, have helped Hub partners and their farmers to engage in FRN research. The six FRNs evaluated various AE practices against key challenges, including use of residue-based interventions for suppressing striga, ID of effect vs ineffective liquid and solid biofertilizers, successful methods for controlling mole rats, effect vs ineffective botanicals for control of internal and external parasites of local chicken and livestock, and assessment of potentially useful value addition practices.
Additional technical support for MHAC’s has helped it along its way to becoming a regional Centre of excellence for agroecology education and research.
IDEMS is handing over the administration of the AE Hub project to Manor House at the end of this year. However, MHAC still lacks staff who can provide the needed scientific leadership for its activities. The long term aim is build the capacity within Manor house to full own the scientific leadership. However we recognise that this will not take less than 5 years and more likely closer to ten even if everything goes well.
This proposal is a bridging grant to support Beth Medvecky to continue to play her current scientific leadership role in the AEHub. The aim is to bridge into a broader IDEMS crosscutting support role which would integrate the AEHub scientific leadership into a coherent approach that integrates international support with local capacity building.
IDEMS approach has taken a similar approach, integrating international support with local capacity building, in our open app development work for the Global Parenting Initiative and Parenting for Lifelong Health. Here our Kenyan partner INNODEMS now has the capability to create apps by authoring and editing spreadsheet content, this is a first step in creating highly localisable open apps which can combine an evidence based core with adaptability to local context. This has potential relevance for CRFS as Apps to support Farmers and scale FRN approaches would benefit from this same model of having an evidence based core while being easy for local partners to adapt and own.
Grant Aims:
This one year grant will be a bridge between the start of the new Kenya AE Hub phase and the next IDEMS renewal when Beth’s role is proposed to be included in broader reframing of IDEMS CRFS support role. The intended outputs and outcomes of the new Kenya AE Hub phase are described in detail in that proposal.