Gender integration in the Plantwise programme: identifying strengths and limitations in Nepal
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In Nepal, the Plantwise programme, in collaboration with International Development Enterprises (iDE) has established networks of locally owned plant clinics, run by community business facilitators (CBFs) trained as plant doctors, who provide practical plant health advice.This study examines how gender is integrated into this programme in three purposively selected study districts.It presents the experiences of farmers, the challenges they faced in accessing plant health services through a gender and social inclusion lens.It also identifies strategies and lessons for development of gender responsive plant health programmes. Gender integration in the Plantwise programme: identifying strengths and limitations in Nepal Highlights• Farmers valued the plant health advisory services provided by Community Business Facilitator (CBF) plant doctors, which were communicated using locally understood language and approaches• 70% of the trained CBF plant doctors were women.This resulted in the number of women farmers visiting plant clinics exceeding that of men farmers where women CBF plant doctors operate.• As a result of the plant health training, CBF plant doctors gained additional technical expertise, which earned them trust, helped to increase their client base, and increase their income.• Plant clinics operations appear to be systemically sustainable as CBF plant doctors are linking agro-dealers with farmers, earning commission on input sales to cover their costs in providing plant health services.• During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic period, plant doctors were able to provide advice to farmers by phone, using different social media platforms, indicating the potential of ICTs to reach farmers located in remote areas of Nepal, who are normally not reached by agricultural extension services. ContextPlantwise is a global programme led by CABI that aims to help farmers reduce crop losses and increase productivity, through strengthening plant health systems, therefore improving the agricultural resilience of rural farmers.Plant clinics are a central part of the programme, where trained extension staff deliver on-demand advice to farmers at central locations e.g. market places, community centres, at regular days and times.In 2013, the Government of Nepal (GoN) and CABI entered into an agreement for the adoption and implementation of the Plantwise programme in the country.It was agreed that the Plant Quarantine and Pesticide Management Centre (PQPMC), erstwhile the Plant Protection Directorate, would be the contact point and coordinating agency in Nepal.The programme trained more than three hundred extension staff (including about 20% women staff) from different district agriculture offices on different modules of the Plantwise programme.These trained extension staff successfully set up and ran plant clinics in their respective areas.Due to the success and relevance of the programme, the GoN institutionalized different Plantwise components in its internal programme with an annual allocation of more than GBP 50,000.However, due to a shortage of staff, (the farmer to extension agent ratio is 1270:1 (Dhital, 2017)), it was decided that plant clinics need to be extended to other alternative approaches like Farmer Field Schools, an FAO initiative; and the CBF programme adopted by iDE, to reach more farmers.In 2018, it was agreed between PQPMC, CABI and iDE that the Plantwise programme should work in collaboration with the ongoing CBF initiative in the country.The CBF initiative trains entrepreneurial farmers based in rural communities with basic IPM skills, to provide extension advice to farmers on agricultural inputs.The CBFs earn a commission from agro-dealers on input sales.Adopting a novel approach, CABI and IDE trained CBFs as plant doctors with courses covering plant health diagnosis, treatment advice and record management.The CBFs How to cite this paper
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".