Tools for understanding the agricultural production systems and their socio-economic context in target regions for the introduction of new banana cultivars: Weekly & daily calendar focus group discussion.

Within the framework of the IITA-led project “Improvement of banana for smallholder farmers in the Great Lakes region of Africa” (also known as the “Breeding Better Bananas” project, http://breedingbetterbananas.org), Bioversity International and partners conducted baseline research in the target regions of Luwero and Mbarara in Uganda, and Bukoba, Meru, Moshi and Rungwe in Tanzania during 2015-2016, prior to conducting on-station and on-farm evaluations of the new NARITA banana cultivars.

Five tools were used to characterise the banana and agricultural production systems, and the socioeconomic context of these systems, in the target regions. The research used a mixed-methods, participatory and sex-disaggregated approach to ensure that the knowledge, experiences and opinions of as many people as possible were obtained.

The weekly & daily calendar FGD tools is used to discuss the activities the participants do in a typical busy week, and then the activities that they and their spouses do in a typical busy day. If there is time, the information is also gathered for a typical day in a quiet season. The information that is gathered during the exercise is used to understand all the activities that the participants do, how much time they take, and will help the researchers to plan any subsequent project activities that may take place in the village.