KEY MESSAGES:
Agricultural advisory services in Mali face several challenges to their effectiveness. The main challenges are:
- the lack of sustainable financing, which limits the coverage and effectiveness of advisory services;
- high illiteracy rates among farmers, which make it difficult to convey and understand advice;
- the weak capacity of grassroots farmers’ organizations (GFOs) to support their members effectively;
- a lack of integration of the various aspects of farming into the advice provided. In fact, current advice focuses mainly on production and fails to address other important aspects such as price volatility, savings, credit, and environmental conditions.
The Family Farming Approach (FFA) offers a solution to these challenges. The FFA integrates the family as a decision-making unit and encourages interaction between the various activities on a farm.
In Pro-ARIDES areas, a participatory, integrated, and iterative approach to advisory services is being implemented with a view to operationalizing the FFA.