4. Research Development Division

4.3 Methodological and Conceptual Work

Diagnostic and Design Methodology

Work on the "Diagnosis and Design" field methodology was initiated in 1981 and it continued from 1982 onward with partial financial support from USAID. A final report for this project was submitted in May.

Work continued on a second, revised, version of a D&D User's Manual which is a Field Guide/ Source Book entitled "An Introduction to Agroforestry Diagnosis and Design". This covers basic principles and procedures, case study examples and an illustrated section on "D&D in Action".

A major effort during the year was to develop a methodology for acquiring and evaluating information about the land use systems at the country/ regional level(the "Macro D&D") and to relate the information about system types to potential recommendation domains for agroforestry technologies. A draft Working Paper (No. 48) on "Planning National Agroforestry Research and Guidelines for Landuse System Description" was prepared along with "Landuse System Description" worksheets. These worksheets have also been translated into French and Spanish. This was an interactive development with COLLPRO in which the procedures were derived for and tested against the needs of the Southern Africa AFRENA and Cameroun field operations (see section 5.3.)

A draft Working Paper on "Socio- and Bio-Economic Information Gathering in Agroforestry Projects" has been prepared which will help in the collection of quantitative information for the design and evaluation of AF systems.

The field work continued on the "Women and Off-Farm Lands" sub-project of the D&D project (establishment and support of school and self-help groups to generate small farmer-managed trials, a survey of households in Machakos and Siaya Districts on the use of wild and semi-domesticated fruits and medicinal plants). After the project leader (D. Rocheleau) left in June, further evaluation of this work was taken over by a consultant. Coding of survey data was done by the Mazingira Institute in readiness for data evaluation once the "Genstat" software package had been acquired.