I have attended different conferences where the discussion had been around repositioning of smallholder farmers but most times, you hardly see the farmers’ representatives on such a stage. However, I attended a recent conference where a similar farmer’s dialogue took place and farmers were well represented. I was really glad to listen to farmers talk about their realities; challenges, actions, or activities done so far, and what they think are the solutions that can work for them and their priorities. I couldn’t be more than happy. One key reflection for me is what I have been clamoring for, farmers have vast knowledge that can solve rural problems but only lack the platforms and resources to execute them.

Over the years, I have always maintained that we need to start rethinking how our programs and interventions are designed, planned, and implemented, especially the approach of the project team doing all the activities. Our approaches had achieved little because farmers (especially women, youth, and people living with Disabilities) had not been involved in the whole process, and other cases, farmers are only involved as a source of information gathering and beneficiaries. Thus, no co-creation or co-ownership whatsoever throughout the process. In my opinion, we need to deliberately test new approaches where farmers get involved from the design stage (as contributors) to the implementation and evaluation. These co-creation and co-ownership approaches bring into consideration the vast indigenous knowledge of programming with other models to create a more inclusive model(s). In simple terms, farmers can be part of the central project team members; who are the core decision makers, and they are well represented.

For instance, many technologies or innovations introduced to improve farmers’ productivity have either been abandoned or less adopted. One of the key reasons could be the challenge of ownership. This is most common to technologies or innovations promoted through project-based interventions. At the end of such projects, farmers are most times unable to sustain the usage especially when the costs of maintenance are very high and don’t satisfy their genuine or urgent needs because they had not been co-created and no co-ownership. Therefore, rethinking this process will be the right step in the right direction.

So, we need to change our mindset from believing that Farmers cannot help themselves to a mindset that farmers have the vast experience and knowledge to know the root cause of their problems and solve them with the appropriate resources and support. We need to start walking our talks by consciously allowing farmers to take the stage and take the backstage because farmers possess knowledge that needs to be harnessed for scaling and sustainability of agricultural technologies and innovations. Don’t forget, that farmers are custodians of indigenous knowledge that can easily be harvested, refined, and explored to achieve food security and shared prosperity.

Let the sharing begin!