I have been in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for about three weeks now. This summer I will be working with the Royal University of Agriculture to help introduce quality standards to vegetable farmers in the Battambang province as part of the Safe Vegetable Value Chain Project (SVVC). SVVC is a project funded by USAID’s Horticulture Innovation Lab at UC Davis. UC Davis has a long collaborative relationship with the Royal University of Agriculture, and I am excited to help out as much as I can this summer. My first few weeks have already flown by and I’m diving into my research objectives.
After some initial orientation and meetings with my university mentor, we set a plan to begin my data collection and surveying right away. My initial surveys and focus groups will help identify what practices and attitudes farmers have about quality standards as well as gauge their interest in joining a new marketing system known as the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS)-- a system that brings together growers and buyers to set community quality and production standards that offer farmers better and more stable pricing. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of jumping in to my research so soon, but fortunately, my university mentor connected me with another graduate student named Ratana at the Royal University of Agriculture who is conducting research on a similar topic.
Ratana is an amazing person who really knows about agriculture and conducting research in this area. Along with my university mentor and the other SVVC project staff, Ratana helped me reality check and translate my surveys, advise me on the proper protocols for engaging community members in my activities, and helped me carry out the logistics of conducting over 30 surveys and three focus group discussions over five days.
During the initial “pre-test” of my survey (the process where test the survey on some participants before we actually conduct the survey on our actual target group), it was clear that some of my questions were not clear enough for people to understand. I was a bit stress about how we would resolve this in time before we had to return to Phnom Penh, but of course Ratana and Gnean Nak (one of the other awesome project staff members) saved the day. They pointed out where people were confused and how to finetune the survey to really get across my questions. We were quickly back on our way and got some good background information that hopefully help us plan our future activities with the community moving forward. Moral of the story is always rely on local experts when conducting research or doing any type of project.
After some initial orientation and meetings with my university mentor, we set a plan to begin my data collection and surveying right away. My initial surveys and focus groups will help identify what practices and attitudes farmers have about quality standards as well as gauge their interest in joining a new marketing system known as the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS)-- a system that brings together growers and buyers to set community quality and production standards that offer farmers better and more stable pricing. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of jumping in to my research so soon, but fortunately, my university mentor connected me with another graduate student named Ratana at the Royal University of Agriculture who is conducting research on a similar topic.
Ratana is an amazing person who really knows about agriculture and conducting research in this area. Along with my university mentor and the other SVVC project staff, Ratana helped me reality check and translate my surveys, advise me on the proper protocols for engaging community members in my activities, and helped me carry out the logistics of conducting over 30 surveys and three focus group discussions over five days.
During the initial “pre-test” of my survey (the process where test the survey on some participants before we actually conduct the survey on our actual target group), it was clear that some of my questions were not clear enough for people to understand. I was a bit stress about how we would resolve this in time before we had to return to Phnom Penh, but of course Ratana and Gnean Nak (one of the other awesome project staff members) saved the day. They pointed out where people were confused and how to finetune the survey to really get across my questions. We were quickly back on our way and got some good background information that hopefully help us plan our future activities with the community moving forward. Moral of the story is always rely on local experts when conducting research or doing any type of project.
Comments
Post a Comment