Why Soft Skills Are a Core Part of Agricultural Innovation
How linking collaboration to innovation is boosting livelihoods in tropical regions
Soft skills such as capacity to collaborate, communicate, reflect and learn to adapt and respond to innovation are equally important to another type of agricultural endeavour: pineapple cultivation.
Despite pineapple being one of the most important commercial fruit crops in Bangladesh, farmers working on their own often earn very little. Growers’ associations are rare which results in lower bargaining power and limited market access for individual farmers.
To help smallholder farmers boost the pineapple industry in Bangladesh, FAO and AGRINATURA, through the CDAIS project, used the TAP approach to coach farmers in the Chittagong Hills, a prime producing area. Farmers attended sessions on leadership skills, building trust, effective communication and participatory decision making.
Having addressed the problems and capacity gaps, the group agreed upon a long-term plan that included forming a new pineapple growers’ association to help farmers achieve better prices and to have a platform from which to communicate with government officials, buyers and intermediaries.
“After CDAIS coaching, we formed the Bandarban Pineapple Growers Organisation,” says Jessi Chakma, the organisation’s treasurer. “I learnt how to work in a group, the rules and regulations, networking and benefits for getting fair prices and bargaining.”
Where before farmers worked alone, now they have become accustomed to taking actions and decisions as a group, resolving problems together as they go.
Change is not always easy but having the right skills to manage it can help. Traditionally, farmers living near Lake Atitlán in central Guatemala have grown maize and beans, but some years ago, they heard about a new variety of avocado that could grow well in their area and boost their income.
However, at first, many farmers found it difficult to make the transition. This was until FAO-AGRINATURA’s CDAIS initiative helped unite local farmers, encouraging avocado cultivation as a livelihood.
The EC-funded CDAIS project facilitated a series of meetings between farmers to share tips and tricks in growing this new crop. After a while, news of their success sparked interest among farmers from all around the lake.
Over the course of a year, a new group of would-be avocado farmers emerged and used CDAIS meetings to implement an action plan and form its own growers’ association.
Sergio Coroxón, president of this new growers’ association, the Association for Integrated Development of the Altiplano (AIDA), remarked that he saw a big difference in the farmers’ income after the implementation of the CDAIS project.
“The greatest achievement of the CDAIS initiative has been the consolidation of AIDA as a representative association of avocado producers from all around Lake Atitlán,” Sergio comments. “But this did not happen overnight, and it was only possible thanks to the many meetings that CDAIS has facilitated since 2015.”
Don Andrés, fellow avocado farmer, agrees. “Since CDAIS came, so many things have changed. They helped us come together, like a large family of growers now working in partnership for the common good,” he says.
To successfully boost the agriculture sector through innovation, there are two types of capacities: technical and functional. However, the latter is often overlooked. FAO supports farmers in both of these areas, aiming to make farmers more successful and agricultural livelihoods more efficient and sustainable.
Building on the experiences from the CDAIS project since August 2019, FAO has been scaling up the TAP common framework through the project “Developing capacities in agricultural innovation systems” in nine countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America with financial support from the EU’s DeSIRA (Development Smart Innovation through Research in Agriculture) initiative.
Learn more
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Website: Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP)
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Website: Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovations Systems (CDAIS)
