Effective farmer groups for defining best practices for sustainable agriculture

Practitioners and farmers are practical people. They are likely to be more comfortable with a process that develops monitoring tools and benchmarks for natural resource management than a process of group development and social capital formation. Yet the two are intrinsically linked. Policy makers and extension workers need to understand the link, and how to use a knowledge of social processes when designing the more concrete process of developing and implementing best practice monitoring and benchmarking with groups.<br /><br />This paper reflects on the experience of establishing and working with farmer groups as they go through a process of identifying environmental issues, setting and monitoring environmental benchmarks and identifying and implementing sustainable farming practices to meet the benchmarks.<br />