After the members of the consortium discussed the objectives of the project and agreed on a preliminary methodology for the field work, the team went to Rufunsa Village to test the approach and tools they had designed in the first 4 days of the workshop. They had also prepared a field manual that detailed the procedure for using each PRA tool in the village and a schedule for the day. The schedule included the sequence of activities to be carried out in the village from the entry procedure to the good byes.

The objective of the field testing was to test whether the adaptations made to PRA tools worked in the field. The test was focused on two main questions: would we be able to collect the information that we need to achieve the research objectives, and are the adapted tools appropriate for working with farmers?

The consortium members needed to have a common field experience of what it was like to use the tools and the areas where they needed to pay particular attention in order to make the results comparable across study sites. To do this, they split into two groups and tried out different tools with two separate groups of farmers. Afterwards they all got together again and discussed the results.

Then, once back from the field, the preliminary field manual was modified on the basis of the field experience.