The Covid-19 health crisis has, as in many other sectors, profoundly disrupted the activity of farmers and development actors. Fert had to adapt to this new situation. In order to keep an operational link with the field during the lockdown period, Fert proposed a series of webinars on agricultural advice to its teams and those of partner farmers’ organizations (FOs).
Seven webinars lasting 1.5 hours were organised between April and June 2020 and dealt with technical content useful to the field teams in order to improve their practices. How to conduct a demonstration plot, organize an exchange visit, store and sell agricultural products, take better account of economic aspects… or understand and better support women in agriculture? For each topic, professional agricultural managers, administrators of Fert and partner FOs, such as FN3PT and Accir, intervened to recall the fundamental messages. In particular, we will retain the following messages:
“Exchange is a state of mind, it is above all the farmers who must decide, the technicians are there to support them”
“We must not build very complex tools, we must know how to remain simple to serve the producers and build over time”
“The discussion is the basis of a collective project, we must start small with those who have shining eyes”
The technicians were able to complement with more technical interventions to share experiences between countries. Each session was attended by nearly 50 people from eight countries.
