I am working with Agriculture engineers at the University of Cordoba, Department of Cordoba, Colombia. The University of Cordoba agriculture engineers have world class community outreach efforts in which each agriculture engineer is assigned to train extremely poor campesinos in one to four municipios within the Department of Cordoba. In order to help the extremely poor campesinos I have suggested the following procedure.
Identify the methods that poverty stricken campesinos feel they can best get out of poverty by monitoring the applications for agriculture micro loans to different micro loan organizations such as Kiva
Provide You Tube vocational training videos so that the extreme poor have training material on tropical lowland agriculture and small animal raising. The Government of Colombia has provided excellent You Tube training videos on how to grow papaya in the Department of Cordoba
Periodically have a student or professor come to the community to teach classes and answer questions. The Department of Cordoba agriculture engineers currently teach classes on the growing of papya, yucca, and white yams.
My suggestions for the FAO are the following
Provide YouTube training videos that are appropriate for different tropical and arid lands areas. The You Tube videos should be classified by Koppen climatic zones and altitude if they are to be used in tropical regions
Focus on making suggestions that are appropriate for raising small animals given the supplies that are available within the region that is being targeted. There is nothing more frustrating than hearing an expert recommend ideas such as micro irrigation when the supplies are not available with the region he/she is targeting.
Provide experts who know principles of Business Process ReEngineering so that the FAO can provide best business practices to their recommendations
Best wishes.
Dr. Paul Rigterink