“This small business I started with PIP in addition to farming
has allowed us to increase household incomes and change the diet. For
this reason, the disputes in our household have totally disappeared
because the cause was poverty and the lack of consultation on the
different activities to be done.”
The previous quote also shows how creating a PIP has changed household
dynamics, and triggers families to start implementing their planned
activities. Results from the impact study indicate that more than 50%
of the 3rd and 4th generation PIP
farmers are within a year already halfway the implementation of their
PIP. This is above all the result of how motivated PIP farmers with a
different mind-set transmit their passion to others. This is what drives
the scaling-up of the PIP approach, and as such joint efforts stop land
degradation:
”At the community level, our family has engendered a more
harmonious understanding in other households, after they had heard my
wife’s testimony about how she has changed. The other households were
surprised because of this radical change in behaviour. Now she is the
one who is mobilizing other households to adhere to the PIP approach
because she has lessons to share. In fact, the community calls us ‘the
PIP household’.” (2nd generation PIP farmer)
In order to assess motivation, responses by farmers on a set of open
questions concerning their future prospects, concrete objectives for the
farm and planned investments, were converted into a “motivation score”
for each household. Although subjective and based on the what farmers
tell, Figure 5 shows a clear pattern of gradually declining motivation
from the first to the fourth generation, being lowest among non-PIP
farmers. This motivation score was found to correlate with e.g.
diversity of land management practices and crop diversity, which shows
that working on both aspects together (land and people, as the PIP
approach does) is essential.
The qualitative evaluation confirms that the PIP approach has a positive
effect on the intrinsic motivation of PIP farmers, especially on their
sense of competence to implement their PIP and the planned farm/land
practices, as well as on their sense of purpose towards this plan. PIP
farmers also often express that they are proud of what they achieve and
feel more esteemed than before, both within the household and in the
village, resulting in more collaboration and exchange of knowledge. This
is nicely expressed by this 2nd generation PIP farmer: