Contributing towards sustainable farming through synergy between student training and action research with emerging farmers

A learning approach has evolved since 1992 at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (formerly the Polytechnic of Namibia) to expose students to hands-on extension work, while encouraging farmers to experiment with sustainable production methods and explore business opportunities. All second and third-year students of the Agriculture programme are taken together on two visits per year to a farming community, often on a resettlement farm. The courses involved are Agricultural Extension, Agribusiness Management, Agricultural Land Management and Agroecology. For each course students undertake particular activities before, during and after the visits. Students are divided into groups, with each group allocated a a broad thematic area of focus to ensure integration. Examples of thematic areas of interest are water; grazing; trees and bushes; livestock; crops; gardening; energy; transport; food storage; value addition; marketing. During the first visit many of the students facilitate the initiation of small-scale trials to be managed by farmers. These trials are then jointly evaluated during the second visit about two months later.