Notes to broadcasters
These questions are designed to help you to interview farmers doing regenerative agriculture and benefitting from it. The interview’s purpose is to educate and encourage farmers with degraded lands to consider adopting some or all regenerative practices that can improve their crop yields and restore degraded lands to productivity. Through this interview, farmers will learn regenerative agriculture lessons from other farmers doing it.
That i s why the questions include discussing the challenges farmers faced or are facing while adopting regenerative agriculture. The farmers you select to interview should have men and women for gender balance. That will illustrate to communities that men and women can gain knowledge from each other. Also, select a farmer doing regenerative agriculture on sloping land to share their experience with those doing it on flat lands.
During the interview, allow the farmers to express themselves freely and their personality to shine. Start with an ice breaker, so that the interview does not feel like an interrogation. If an answer is unsatisfactory, don’t ridicule them. Ask the same question in a simpler way or defer it to another farmer in the studio by asking them to share their experience on the same. Ask the farmers to be specific more so with numbers. For instance, if a question is about yields ask for a number, like say 3000 kilograms per acre. Then do a follow by asking, is that less or more than you harvested, before embracing regenerative agriculture.
Script
Suggested questions for farmers in regenerative agriculture
- With me today is Mr. [Name], a farmer from [Village] who practises agroforestry together with his wife and children. He owns about three acres of land where he grows crops and integrates trees into his farming system.
- How long have you been a farmer?
- How big is your farm and what are some of the crops you grow?
- Is your farm on a slope or on a flat land?
- Please tell us how you learned about regenerative agriculture, and what you initially thought about this new way of farming?
- How badly was your farm degraded? How much were you harvesting, and what was the state of your soil and the environment/biodiversity?
- What truly convinced you to embrace regenerative agriculture and how much land did you start with?
- Please take us through how after embracing regenerative agriculture how differently you prepared and managed your farm for that first season, compared to the previous seasons when you farmed traditionally?
- Tell us about some of the regenerative practices you introduced on your farm that you never did before. Like agroforestry, minimal tillage, crop rotation, intercropping etc.
- For you (farmer with sloppy land), your farm is on a slope, what regenerative farming practices did you introduce to restore degraded soil to fertility, prevent soil erosion, and stop soil water evaporation?
- Pests and diseases are a challenge to crops. What regenerative agriculture practices have you adopted to control pests and diseases on your farm?
- In that first season after embracing regenerative agriculture, did you have an increase in crop yields? And by how much did your yields increase by? Since then, how much have your crop yields successively increased by?
- Have you diversified into growing other “new” crops and which ones after adopting regenerative agriculture practices?
- Has an increase in crop yields improved the finances and food security for your family by having surplus harvests? How does that make you feel?
- Tell us the challenges you faced, or are facing after adopting regenerative agriculture.
- Tell us based on your experience since embracing regenerative agriculture, would you encourage other farmers to embrace this “different” way of farming? Tell us why?
Acknowledgements
Contributed by: James Karuga, Agricultural Writer, Kenya
Reviewed by: Mweruka Pascal senior team leader Green Leaf enterprise Farm Radio International.