Research conducted through the Keough School of Global Affairs’ Integration Lab (i-Lab) has contributed to a peer-reviewed study examining how resource constraints affect farmers’ ability to retain knowledge of water-smart agricultural practices in Guatemala.
The paper, published in Discover Agriculture, stems from a project conducted in collaboration with Catholic Relief Services through the Keough School’s i-Lab, a hands-on experience in which MGA students work in teams with global partners to develop practical solutions to real-world challenges.
The original project brought together four master of global affairs students to examine water-smart agriculture training in Guatemala’s Dry Corridor alongside Catholic Relief Services and its local partner, Caritas. Aidé Cuenca Narváez and Alix Underwood served as co-research leads, collaborating on the research design, data collection and analysis.
After the i-Lab concluded, they continued working with the data alongside Tracy Kijewski-Correa, the Frank M. Freimann professor of structural engineering and hazard resilience and the William J. Pulte director of the Keough School's Pulte Institute for Global Development, developing the research into the published paper. Festus O. Amadu, a former postdoc at the Keough School and a current professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, also contributed to the paper.
“The team of four i-Lab students designed an outstanding data collection platform for this project,” Kijewski-Correa said. “To now see two of those early-career researchers continue to derive evidence from that data and share it in the peer-reviewed literature demonstrates the power of the i-Lab for our students, our partners and now the scholarly community.”
The study focused on Guatemala’s Dry Corridor where farmers face challenges including drought, excessive rainfall and food insecurity. The research examined four water-smart agricultural practices promoted through Catholic Relief Services’ farmer field schools: permanent mulching, responsible nutrient management, integrated armyworm management and visual soil evaluation.
Researchers analyzed survey data from 507 households across 12 communities in Guatemala’s Chiquimula and Baja Verapaz departments. The surveys were conducted in 2022 with participants in two Catholic Relief Services programs, Restorative Agriculture in Communities for Economic Sustainability and Restoring Nutrition and Food Security in Communities of the East and North of Guatemala.
The study examined whether farmers retained knowledge of the agricultural practices six months to a year after participating in farmer field schools. The researchers found that perceived resource constraints were associated with lower knowledge retention for three of the four practices studied. The exception was responsible nutrient management, for which resource constraint was positively associated with knowledge retention.
Knowledge retention also varied across practices. Permanent mulching, which the researchers classified as having the lowest cognitive load, had the highest average retention. Integrated armyworm management and visual soil evaluation, which were classified as having higher cognitive loads because of their complexity, novelty or Spanish-language literacy demands, had lower levels of retention.
The researchers also found that education was positively associated with knowledge retention, with the relationship becoming stronger as the cognitive load of the practice increased.
For Cuenca Narváez and Underwood, however, the research was about more than analyzing data.
“What motivated our team was the fact that the survey participants donated not just their time, but also their expertise and knowledge,” Cuenca Narváez said. “We believed there was more we could do with the data to share Guatemala’s experience with this project.”
Underwood said the experience of conducting research in partnership with the communities involved reinforced the responsibility researchers have to make meaningful use of the information participants share.
“We were really motivated to do something more with the data,” she said. “We felt that responsibility to make something come of it, to analyze our findings more closely and share it with a broader audience.”
The findings have implications for the design of agricultural extension programs in resource-constrained communities. The researchers argue that programs may need to bundle training with interventions that help offset resource constraints long enough for practices to take hold. They also recommend greater use of visual communication, instruction in local languages and approaches that connect new agricultural practices with farmers’ existing knowledge and practices.
“There is clear evidence that climate-smart agriculture can help smallholder farmers keep pace with escalating climate shocks, but this work highlights the importance of harmonizing these interventions with the practices and norms of the communities they serve,” Kijewski-Correa said.