Farmer recruitment
- John Njenga, Gideon Kibusia, and Samuel Nakhone
Recruiting farmers is the first step in the Better Globe Forestry farmers program. The key participants in the process are the:
- Site forestry manager: Better Globe Forestry staff that manages agroforestry agents
- Agroforestry agents (AA): Better Globe Forestry staff that operates in the grassroots and contacts chiefs, through whom they gain entry to new territories
- Chiefs (in Kenya) and local council (in Uganda): Government officials in the grassroots
- Community representatives: Community members identified by farmer group members, vetted by AAs, and recruited to act as agents for mobilization of farmers, sensitizations, and to check tree counting data
The process can be summarized in the following workflow:
The recruitment process is continuous. However, it is worth noting that recruiting farmers is done one year prior to planting with them. This is part of strategic planning that grants the team time to organize farmers into formal groups, complete all the approved training modules in a timely manner, and finally grant the farmers ownership of the program.
Farmer details are collected digitally on a tablet, and contracts are generated in the back office by the farmers program manager, or an approved personnel after the site forestry manager validates the data collected by his team of AAs on the farms, as depicted in the illustration below.
