Leta, Gerba, Stellmacher, Till, Kelboro, Girma, Van Assche, Kristof and Hornidge, Anna-Katharina (2018) Social learning in smallholder agriculture: the struggle against systemic inequalities. Journal of Workplace Learning, 30 (6). pp. 469-487. DOI https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-12-2017-0115.

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Abstract

Purpose

Ethiopia operates a large agricultural extension service system. However, access to extension-related knowledge, technologies and agricultural inputs is unequally distributed among smallholder farmers. Social learning is widely practiced by most farmers to cope with this unequal distribution though its practices have hardly been documented in passing on knowledge of agriculture and rural development or embedding it into the local system of knowledge production, transfer and use. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to identify the different methods of social learning, as well as their contribution to the adoption and diffusion of technologies within Ethiopia’s smallholder agricultural setting.
Design/methodology/approach

A mixed methods approach was used, comprising farmer and expert interviews, focus group discussions, informal individual discussions and key informant interviews. The data were documented, coded and later analyzed using SPSS and ATLAS.ti.
Findings

The findings showed that 55 per cent of the farmers in the studied areas fully relied on social, community-level learning to adopt agricultural technologies, while 35 per cent of them relied on social learning only partly. Farmers acquired knowledge through social networks by means of communication, observation, collective labor groups, public meetings, socio-cultural events and group socialization. Informal institutions such as iddir, debo and dado, helped farmers learn, adopt and diffuse technologies.
Originality/value

This study used the concept of epistemic oppression by Dotson (2014) as a conceptual framework to examine farmers’ access to extension services and to analyze how informal institutions serve as workplace learning for the smallholder farmers. The authors suggest community-level social learning serves as a coping mechanism against the prevailing limitations of the formal extension system, and at the same time, it guards against the deepening of social, political and epistemic inequalities that are inherent to the knowledge system.

Document Type:	Article
Programme Area:	UNSPECIFIED
Research affiliation:	Social Sciences > Development and Knowledge Sociology
Refereed:	Yes
Open Access Journal?:	No
DOI:	https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-12-2017-0115
ISSN:	1366-5626
Date Deposited:	05 Jun 2019 11:26
Last Modified:	26 Mar 2024 13:28
URI:	http://cris.leibniz-zmt.de/id/eprint/2005

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