Reg Noble

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Manager at Toronto Metropolitan University

This guidebook helps researchers and extensionists learn an easy rapid appraisal technique that enables farmers to draw conceptual models of their farm systems. The drawings help researchers and extensionists to understand quickly local agricultural practices and identify entry points for integrating new enterprises into the farm. The book can be u...

Many farming practices degrade agroecosystems. High-external-input or modern farming tends to degrade by pollution whereas traditional, low-input systems generally tend to degrade by erosion. Smallholders in Sub-Saharan Africa, the focus of this paper, are forced to degrade their natural resource base just to keep pace with growing populations. Out...

Farmers, local extension workers and NGO field staff play increasingly more important roles in 'community based' agriculture and natural resource management projects or programs. Ideas about priority problems and how they might be solved are expected to come from the community. A bottom-up, participatory approach to project design and implementatio...

This paper is about the importance of learning in participatory approaches and about how ISG introduced this dimension through "Linked Local Learning" workshops. Part one of this paper describes and compares participatory methodologies using four dimensions: - Methodologies through time; - Learning space versus data gathering; -Hard versus soft sys...

ILEIA and its Ghanaian NGO partners are beginning to document farmers' knowledge on natural resource management in farming communities in each of two pilot areas in the Upper East Region of Northern Ghana at Sandema and Langbinsi. This is the first step in working with these communities to explore the potentials and constraints for developing more...

Some farmers in Malawi (Central−Southern Africa) are beginning to manage their wet lands in ways which are improving the ecological sustainability of their farms and ultimately their economic viability. The case studies presented in this article illustrate how farmers have designed their own integrated pond−crop systems for converting marginal wet...

"The current move towards decentralisation and privatisation of agricultural services in many East African countries is requiring many organisations and individuals to 're-invent' their roles and responsibilities. Government staff at many levels, private input suppliers, farmer organisations and researchers all face the challenge of reduced governm...