Games-based learning for aggregated farming in western Kenya

Bell, Andrew R.; Zhang, Wei; Oingo, Balentine; Kinuthia, Dickson; Blackmore, Ivy; Hettiarachchi, Upeksha; Davis, Kristin E.

Games-based learning for aggregated farming in western Kenya

Autores

Hettiarachchi, Upeksha

Davis, Kristin E.

Editor

Centre for Transdisciplinary Development Studies
University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro

Descripción

Aggregated farm models offer the opportunity for fragmented smallholder landscapes to function at a larger scale, which is more conducive to both resilient livelihoods and good environmental stewardship but requires skills development among farmers in coordination and collective action. Experimental games provide opportunities for both research and experiential learning in agricultural systems. The games create hypothetical ‘action situations’ that bring none of the costs and risks of real-life action situations while still providing exposure to learning opportunities and potentially triggering learning with real-life utility. We developed a novel experimental game called ‘Shared-Cropping’ using the ELM lab’s Netlogo-based ‘Farm-Squares’ platform that presented challenges of farming and grazing in an openly shared space and played it with farmers in the initial stages of launching an aggregated farming scheme in Kisumu and Vihiga Counties in Western, Kenya, supported by the CGIAR Research Initiative on Nature-Positive Solutions. In Shared-Cropping, players interact via tablet computers connected over a mobile hotspot to choose how a shared landscape should be allocated to different farming activities over time. We used Shared-Cropping in an intervention that varied how players earned points across treatments – according to their earnings, according to the group’s lowest-earning player, and according to the outcome of group decision – and that included a pre- and post-game discrete choice experiment framed around agricultural losses and time use. We found farmers’ attention shifting to view group efforts more favorably after playing the game, particularly in the face of higher agricultural losses. Through the game play and post-game debrief discussion, we observed some evidence of direct, technical literal learning from the game, with players focusing attention on mechanisms for maintaining soil health, including diversifying land use. We also found evidence of learning around the challenges of group coordination and the sharing of responsibilities and benefits that persisted through a six-month follow-up visit, with better performance in game play by mixed-gender groups resonating with participants as an important consideration in their current and future aggregate farming efforts.