Joint research with the Nkonkobe Farmers’ Association and eDikeni WUA

Since mid-2015 ARDRI has undertaken a number of joint research initiatives with the Nkonkobe Farmers’ Association and the eDikeni Water Users Association. The topics of the research initiatives were and are being identified through open discussions as to the challenges and opportunities facing farmers in the area. Thereafter the general approach is simple: the NFA and ARDRI sit down to discuss the purpose of the research initiative, plan the survey (or implementation) approach, and design the questionnaire (where relevant). Then, the survey is conducted by a team comprising both members of the NFA and ARDRI staff. ARDRI and the NFA then discuss the data/findings, and collaborate on the write-up. The dam cleaning exercise was somewhat different, in that it did not involve a survey or even interviews, rather a jointly-planned ‘experiment’ to determine whether a labour-intensive method could be employed to clean out silt and mud from a typical communal area dam.

The report from the market survey can be downloaded here.

The report from the tractor / tractor owner survey can be downloaded here.

The report from the dam cleaning exercise can be downloaded here, and the scaling up of labour-intensive dam cleaning proposal can be downloaded here.

The report from the Fetsa Tlala study can be downloaded here

The report from the wind-pump rehabilitation survey can be downloaded here.

Presently, the NFA and ARDRI are in the process of collecting and assimilating oral histories of farming in the Nkonkobe area.