Using a Social Network Approach to Improve Participatory Research for Conservation Agriculture: Initial Findings from the Mt. Elgon Region Initial Findings from the Mt. Elgon Region

The presentation reviewed initial findings for a study on social network approaches to improve participatory research for conservation agriculture in the Mt. Elgon region of Kenya and Uganda. Changes in technology transfer and international agricultural research were presented along with the notion of using social networks to study the co-innovation process. The key contributions of the study to project management were the building of trust and improvement of participatory research and the key contributors to CAPS technology development were the revelation of differences between perceived and reported network contacts, ill-informed perspectives about the beliefs of others, and the problems regarding actual agricultural technologies. The study helped to identify challenges to Conservation Agriculture (CA) such as herbicide use in Tororo and CA as a hand technology.