Farmer experimentation groups in north-east Brazil : The story of a partnership between smallholders' organisations and an NGO seeking to enhance agricultural innovation in the Agreste region of Paraiba State

Projeto Paraiba started in 1993. This local development programme is being carried out in partnership by a Brazilian NGO - AS-PTA1 - and several farmer organisations from three municipalities of the Agreste region in Paraiba State. This case study is about innovation management by smallholders in the context of this initiative. The paper will retrace how innovation management has evolved and grown to be one of the main focuses of the programme. In doing this it will analyse the methods, results and limits of a pioneering local initiative, conceived as a means to support a farmer-led innovation process. The first section will present the region and the institutional and methodological approach of Projeto Paraiba. It will focus mainly on activities that refer directly to innovation management with farmers' organisations and the birth of farmers experimentation groups (FE groups) in the Agreste region of Paraiba State. It will show how these activities, that started addressing individual interested farmers, slowly shifted towards the support of groups of experimenting farmers. This section will also present how these groups work at present and give examples of the technologies that are being tried out (live fences with gliricidia and native species, crop diversification, fodder storage techniques, etc.). The second section will describe Projeto Paraiba' s support activities to these groups. These play four different roles: help FE group organisation (Including logistics), feed experimentation processes in terms of methods, information and material inputs (genetic material, equipment, etc.), help collect and analyse data and evaluate results and, lastly, provide support for dissemination of results and lessons. (Résumé d'auteur