Project completion report : horticultural development

Considerable progress was made toward meeting the needs of small-scale commercial and subsistence horticultural growers and in strengthening the Ministry of Agriculture's (MOA) capabilities in horticultural research. The MOA's Horticultural Research Unit carried out varietal trials on six major crops as well as comparisons of irrigation techniques and cultural practices. In addition, targets for counterpart, on-the-job, and inservice training were exceeded in most cases and extension support was provided to a variety of groups, including privately owned production units, small vegetable growers, primary and secondary schools, hospitals/clinics, and 4-B clubs. The project was less successful in working with Community Development Associations (CDA's), largely as a result of the CDA's lack of management capability. While institutional linkages were developed between the GOB and CDA's, this area was deemphasized due to these management deficits. Experience shows that the project should have: more realistically assessed CDA capacity at the outset; placed more emphasis on collecting and analyzing data on the feasibility and economics of horticulture in Botswana; and paid more attention to counterparts' prior level of training (replacement of project technicians with trained staff was impossible in some cases) and to the availability of a continous supply of inputs. Also: access to a ready market for crops produced is vital; attention to crop production for domestic consumption in gardens around the home using waste water may have been warranted; the project's time frame seems to have been extremely short; and a no-cost extension (which had been requested by the grantee but denied by A.I.D.) would have allowed staff a few more months in which to achieve project purposes.