Estimating the numbers of farmers planting fodder shrubs in East Africa

As the number of farmers planting fodder shrubs in East Africa increases so does the difficulty of counting them!ofcourse we do not actually count planters- we use several different methods to estimate their numbers depending on the circumstances. But before discussing these, it is important to understand the reasons why estimating numbers of planters is important. first it helps us document the progress in desseminating a new practice. Infact most donor organizations have a strong interest in learning about such progress in projects they finance. Second estimating numbers helps us understand where thre are bottlenecks in adoption process and where uptake is low, so we can target research and extension activities to help solve problems for example, estimating the numbers of fodder shrub planters as a proportion of the number of farmers in an area, or better, the number of farmers owning cows, can provide insight into the problems of pomoting adoption constraints and how to solve them e.g through identifying shrub species for marginal environments or by improving market access.

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