Conventional research and extension approaches that are commodity-driven and lacking in socio-economic considerations, are generally based on single disciplinary orientations, and a non-participatory research tradition in which technologies are generated by researchers and transferred in a linear fashion to the end users. There is clear evidence from AHI research and experience that technologies developed using the conventional approach and on-station research, with limited involvement of farmers, were often ineffective in addressing farmers' constraints. This was largely due to the limited consideration of socio-economic and agroecological circumstances of the end users.

Inclusion of farmers in the research process is a positive step towards increasing adoption of effective agriculture technologies. Research methods in AHI have been further improved so that researchers adopt a team-based, multidisciplinary approach toward solving locally identified problems. This led to simultaneous introduction of technologies targeted toward solving diverse system problems of concern to farmers (soil fertility decline, limited income, food insecurity, insufficient feed), and a creative coupling of these technologies by farmers. The needs of male and female farmers, as well as households with various levels of resource endowments, into technology targeting efforts—and fully involved them in an open process for designing trials, choosing and evaluating technologies, and evaluating the program at large.

Examples of successful on-site participatory research include:

• a shift from generalized to spot application application of inorganic fertilizers, and their optimal integration with organic nutrient resources;
• identification of enterprises (forage crops, trees) suited to marginal lands;
• rejection of technologies generated through a "disciplinary lens" (i.e. crops bred to maximize yield of food) due to insufficient aboveground biomass that could be used for feed, suggesting new avenues of crop breeding that optimize yields to diverse system components; and
• positive agroecological spin-offs of technological innovations, such as increased moisture retention capacity from vegetative propagation of ground cover and increased yields of subsequent crops in rotation due to soil fertility investments in target crops.

Farmers actively participate in decision-making and implementation plans, including the preliminary stages of problem identification, experimentation and utilization and dissemination of research results. The process should build farmer capacity in intensification of their respective systems and empower them to continue on their own beyond the scope of a project. As a result of these new research methods, farmers' decision-making capacity in benchmark sites has improved.