FEATURE COVER-STORY
Tumbling the fissure between knowing and practicing agriculture By Innocent Mhangarai
A
griculture and rural development are faced with various challenges and these have continued from one generation to another. One of the major challenges associated with agriculture and rural development is narrowing the gap that exists between what is known and what is done or put into practice. In most cases farmers practice farming and construes it as they are doing farming as a business. One of the critical questions to ask farmers is do they practice what they know or do they know what they are practicing? As an outcome, most interventions in agricultural and rural development have realized worrying achievements. Therefore, scheming operative ways of converting knowledge into performances is one of the actions that farmers ought to be invigorated to implement. Revitalizing rival bases of information Formal knowledge structures underlines evidence that is congregated through formal research procedures, smallholder farmers and agro dealers and other relevant stakeholders are exposed to varied rival sources of data and information. Through capacitation, education
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and well as look and learn outings, farmers give the impression of being cognizant that there is a line between crop and livestock explorations and these are sovereign of each other. As an upshot, the mainstream of small holder farmers who do integrated crop and livestock production states that they are not getting pleasing answers as findings are independent of each other. Nevertheless, it is significant to note that formal and informal investigations disclose the merits and demerits of many agricultural innovations and practices such as artificial insemination, climate smart farming and contract farming among others. However, the absence of tangible ripostes pertaining what works better for them demonstrates paradoxes which smallholder farmers frequently repeat around and merge with their indigenous knowledge. Refining storage facilities Small quantities of supplies produced by smallholder farmers brands it cost effective to make the most and invest in storage facilities. The majority of farmers keep their produce in
