Tel: +254 (0)20 2271000/ 20

Email: ashc@cabi.org

Toolbox

The toolbox has 5 sections – used together they are designed to help anyone you to produce better communications material. Sections 1-3 address the content of your materials, section 4 looks at how you communicate and section 5 helps you think about evaluation.

Section 1: Cropping guides and technical briefs are designed to help you ensure that the content of the materials is correct. The cropping guides are generic but comprehensive usually around 60 pages of crop specific or cropping system specific ISFM information.  The technical briefs are specific to an agro-ecological zone within a country – they are usually 10-12 pages. Both will be valuable sources of technical ISFM information that can be customised to your needs.

Section 2: The Fertilizer Tools are designed to help you to calibrate fertilizer guidelines/recommendations in a farmer-friendly ways. These tools have researched locally available containers and calculated the density of different fertilizers – so that it is easier to pass on information on fertilizer applications. The OFRA team has also produced guidelines for farmers that maximise the return on investment for farmers. We have also shared the field trial protocol used to set up the fertilizer response trials by the partners in the OFRA research project as well as access to the OFRA database of fertilizer response trials to help you to see how these materials were developed by the OFRA team.

Section 3: The herbicide and pesticide checklist will ensure that you never recommend a product banned by an international treaty.

Section 4: The Communication Tools offer hints and advice to you create farmer-friendly ISFM information resources. The media production guides give practical advice on how to make the best possible information in range of different format including print and radio. There are policy briefs and literature reviews that can give useful background context and information for the production of farmer-level information. There are also photo kits – sets of photographs and illustrations taken by the ASHC team and available for use.

Also don’t forget that the materials library contains around 400 examples of materials that can be easily searched, downloaded and customised.

Section 5: These evaluation tools  may help you with project management.

If you are aware of other materials that would improve this toolbox – please let us know – via ashc@cabi.org for the attention of Duncan.