Small Farm Resource Centers (SFRCs) coordinate trials on a central site as well as on fields of individual farmers. Any new ideas, techniques, or crops are first evaluated at the SFRC, and then often tested via on-farm trials in the community. The purpose of the SFRC is to evaluate, within the community, ideas that have been proven elsewhere and that show promise. The best of these ideas are adapted to become the backbone of the SFRC’s agricultural outreach and community development efforts, and are developed into a variety of educational and training formats, outreach projects and poverty alleviation initiatives. Thus, SFRCs have two distinct functions. First, the experimental component tests and adapts new ideas that have potential to aid in the development of the community. These adaptive experiments make sure that what has worked elsewhere (local or distant) can reliably be expected to work in a particular community with similar environmental conditions (e.g., climatic, topographic, soil) as the SFRC. Secondly, the demonstration and training component uses the center and on-farm trials as teaching tools. The demonstrations and trainings can be a base from which promising results are shown to extension staff of the sponsoring organization, interested government officials, development groups, or farmers in the community.
