Madagascar FORI Results
FORI | Project results | Madagascar
Farmers leading the research on soil fertility in the Highlands
On a small farm in the Madagascar Highlands, soil fertility is not one problem among several. It is the one that decides whether anything else is worth trying. What this project changes is who gets to work on it. In three Highland regions, market gardeners design and run their own trials, and open their plots so neighbours can judge the results for themselves.
Photo: Fert
Who is involved
Four organisations behind RAITRA
Research and training centre
Ceffel
The Fifata group’s agroecology reference body. Runs trials, trains relay farmers and spreads innovations.
Read more about Ceffel (opens in a new tab)
Farmer organisation network
Fifata
The national federation of Malagasy farmer organisations. Fifatam, Sahi and VFTV hosted the work.
Visit site for Fifata (opens in a new tab)
Federation of agricultural colleges
Fekama
Part of the Fifata group. Its Ambalavao and Ambondromisotra colleges ran trials on their teaching farms.
Read more about Fekama (opens in a new tab)
Agri-agency
Fert
French agri-agency and AgriCord member. Partners the Fifata group on technical support and capitalisation.
Visit site for Fert (opens in a new tab)The project
How RAITRA worked
Small farms, degraded soils and inputs no one can afford
Family farms in Madagascar are squeezed on every side: limited land, poor access to inputs, markets and equipment, and soils that climate change is eroding and degrading faster than they can recover. Managing fertility sustainably is not one option among several. It is the precondition for intensifying anything at all.
2025 made that harder. A drought at the end of 2024 was followed by intense rains in early 2025 that damaged harvests and flooded several regions, though the second half brought more regular and broadly favourable rainfall. The president was removed from office in October and a transition government took over. Inflation stayed high and input prices kept rising, pushing producers towards short-cycle crops and quick cash.
The RAITRA project answered with research the farmers run themselves. It ran from January 2022 to June 2026 and was implemented by four organisations: Fert as agri-agency and lead executor, Ceffel, the specialised farmer organisation of the Fifata group, Fekama, the federation of Madagascar’s agricultural colleges, and Fifata itself, working through three regional farmer organisations that hosted the work in the field: Fifatam, Sahi and VFTV. Fofifa, the national agricultural research institute, was the research partner.
Project facts
- Full name
- Inclusive action research for an agroecological transition in market garden crops, in three regions of the Madagascar Highlands. Known as RAITRA
- Country
- Madagascar: Vakinankaratra, Amoron’i Mania and Haute Matsiatra
- Dates
- 1 January 2022 to 30 June 2026. Figures on this page are from the final report, covering the whole implementation period
- Implemented by
- Fert, Ceffel, Fekama and Fifata, through the regional farmer organisations Fifatam, Sahi and VFTV, with Fofifa as research partner
- Farmers involved
- 7,822 reached directly, of whom 3,127 women and 3,270 young people, and an estimated 20,339 reached indirectly. 78 running their own trials in 2026, 231 trained to co-lead research
A farmer-led research cycle
Two years into the project, the first on-farm trials showed up a gap that had nothing to do with agronomy: the field advisers accompanying the trials needed better method. So 2025 was spent fixing the research process itself, writing down what a good trial looks like, and building the physical sites where results get shown to other farmers.
Fixing the method
A training on running on-farm trials and analysing the results was held on 23 and 24 April 2025, led by a Fofifa researcher. Twenty field advisers from the three regions took part, seven of them women.
The point was to give advisers what they need to accompany producers through a rigorous trial and to interpret what comes out of it, which also creates a shared language between producers, technicians and researchers.
Writing down what works
A good-practice guide for setting up on-farm trials was produced from the accumulated experience: the key steps, the mistakes to avoid and the conditions for success, drawn up through consultation between technical teams and the feedback of the farmers themselves.
A second capitalisation product covers black soldier fly rearing, with the production technique, an economic analysis of start-up costs, and results on using the larvae in poultry feed and the frass as fertiliser.
Building the shop window
Thirty agroecological sites managed by farmers were installed to spread what the trials produced. Each brings several practices together in one place: a liquid compost tank, a classic composter, a vermicomposter, a water retention basin, biopesticide plants, intercropping demonstrations, seed production and fruit tree nurseries.
They double as distribution points where members can obtain the inputs they need to start: worms, seedlings and seed. Eleven of them are in Amoron’i Mania, in the rural communes of Ambositra II and Ambondromisotra, and three in Haute Matsiatra.
Relay farmers do the spreading
Training ran all year across the three regions to equip paysans relais, the relay farmers who pass practices on to their peers, in technique, teaching and organisation alike. In Haute Matsiatra: biochar production and use for 65 relay farmers, composting for 40, and mango grafting and young plant production for 20 nursery growers. In Amoron’i Mania: two sessions for 27 participants on soil fertility, biopesticides and extension technique. In Vakinankaratra: nursery training for 27 new nursery growers.
And 25 follow-up missions
Twenty-five post-training follow-up and accompaniment missions ran through the year, reaching 1,045 beneficiaries. They covered biological fertilisation and pest control, the agroecological sites, varietal trials on rainfed rice, potato, onion, maize, citrus and market garden crops, collective dynamics including the Fifatantsaha village mutual-aid system, and technical and economic monitoring tools including e-roso.
Everyone involved in the work
- Ceffel, specialised farmer organisation of the Fifata group, Antsirabe, co-executor
- Fifata, the national federation, with Fifatam, Sahi and VFTV, the three regional farmer organisations hosting the work
- Fekama, the federation of Madagascar’s agricultural colleges, implementing partner
- Fert, supporting agri-agency and main executor
- CIRAD, IRD and the LRI, on varietal trials, seed access and earthworm species
- Fofifa / CENRADERU, national agricultural research institute, research partner
- The Ambalavao and Ambondromisotra agricultural colleges of the Fekama network, teaching farms and training grounds
- FN3PT and IFO (France), IMBARAGA (Rwanda) and URMAG (Côte d’Ivoire), on exchanges
Reach over the whole project
Reach built year on year: 148 farmers in 2022, 550 in 2023, 1,377 in 2024, 3,661 in 2025 and 2,086 in the final six months to June 2026, giving 7,822 over the whole period.
Behind the reach figure sits a spread of technical training delivered by the three regional organisations. In 2025, Sahi trained 196 producers on potato, 345 on onion and 20 on market gardening. Fifatam trained 139 on biological fertiliser production and 153 on agroecology. VFTV trained 15 on agroecology and 14 on fish farming. Forty women and young people took part in the decisions on launching and running the local trials, 14 at Fifatam, 11 at Sahi and 15 at VFTV, the highest figure of the project and more than three times the target of 12.
Adoption is counted separately. The highest annual figure recorded was 2,203 farmers adopting innovations from the local trials, against a final target of 2,000. Over the period the adopters break down into 1,336 men, 867 women and 1,048 young people. Because the indicator is not tracked by name, the annual figures are not added together.
From four experimenters to seventy-eight
The number of farmers running their own experiments rose every year of the project: 4 in 2022, 22 in 2023, 36 in 2024, 60 in 2025 and 78 in 2026, against a final target of 64. In 2025 they were 16 with Fifatam, 36 with Sahi and 8 with VFTV, on potato, onion and tomato, covering fertilisation, variety comparison and biological pest control. In 2026, 6 with Fifatam, 37 with Sahi and 35 with VFTV, on organic fertiliser, insect and pest control, improved seed and seed cleaning, across potato, onion, rainfed rice, carrot, tomato and cabbage.
Most of them ran their trial again after identifying and correcting what had gone wrong the first time. That is the difference between attending a demonstration and doing research, and it is the reason the field adviser training in April mattered.
The market garden crops on the eleven Amoron’i Mania sites are grown using the results of earlier trials on tomato fertilisation. The research is not a parallel activity, it is the input to what the sites demonstrate.
Alongside the trials, Sahi supplied its members with improved potato and onion seed on the basis of demand collected in February and March, in two waves, April for the off-season campaign and June to include producers whose calendar shifts after rice. In April: 1,660 kg of Maneva potato from Manalalondo in Itasy and 1,000 kg from Andranomanelatra near Antsirabe, plus 21 boxes of Violet de Galmi onion and 200 kapoaka of Rouge de Tana, reaching 177 potato producers and 312 onion producers. In June: 1,600 kg of Meva potato for 98 producers. The distribution covered 21 communes across 6 districts.
“Before the project our potato harvests were poor: we got only 105 kg of small tubers from a plot of 2.5 ares, and chemical fertiliser alone cost 38,000 Ariary for that area. Today we get 165 kg from the same 2.5 ares, an increase of nearly 57%. All charges included, a kilogram of potato now costs us about 200 Ariary to produce, against 250 with the chemical system, a 20% cut in unit cost.”
Photo: Fert
Four organisations with four distinct jobs
The division of labour is explicit, and the four roles are complementary. Fert provides technical advice, mainly on method and management. Ceffel puts its expertise at the disposal of the technical teams of the regional organisations and the agricultural colleges, both for running trials and for spreading the results. The regional organisations exchange directly with each other, which is where practices actually get enriched. Fofifa builds the capacity to run and analyse trials properly.
Relations with public authorities are good and constructive. Courtesy visits were organised in the intervention communes at the outset to present the approach and the activities, and the Fifata group team keeps sharing information with the authorities as the work proceeds. That trust has limited administrative blockages and kept the project coherent with local public policy.
Ceffel also signed a consortium agreement under GENESS, coordinated by CIRAD, on improving producers' access to quality basic seed of adapted varieties, a key lever for agroecological intensification. Ceffel, Fifata and Fert are co-applicants on Dinaammic, an EU DeSIRA project, so results and lessons from the two projects are shared and used together.
Rwanda, potato
A visit organised with the Rwandan apex organisation IMBARAGA and the agri-agency Afdi, to a potato sector known for being structured, high-performing and inclusive. RAB research centres, private seed producers, cooperatives and the Horticulture Hub. Eight participants, four of them young. Transferable findings: mini-tuber production under greenhouse, a clear certified seed scheme, collective marketing through cooperatives, and access to credit and storage.
Côte d’Ivoire, marketing
Seven participants, four farmers and three technicians, looking at marketing services run by farmer organisations. URMAG, accompanied by Fert, showed a structured system with clear governance. They also saw Nitidae’s participatory guarantee system and direct sales supported by digital tools.
Between the three regions
Fifatam ran an intra-regional visit in June to the farms furthest along with agroecological practice, 12 producers of whom 3 women and 3 young people. VFTV took 19 members from 15 farmer organisations to Antananarivo on black soldier fly and marketing, 8 women and 10 young people. A Sahi technician visited Amoron’i Mania.
Ceffel technical day
More than 120 participants: producers, researchers, technical advisers and institutional representatives. Five field trial stations on a rotating circuit, with researchers and producers presenting jointly, field demonstrations, and posters and technical sheets as the record.
The practice that travelled furthest
Vermicompost, from one trial in 2008 to five regions
The Fifata group has developed several kinds of compost over the years, spread to farmers through Ceffel. Vermicompost is the one that stood out. Introduced in 2008, it was promoted with a single technical recommendation. Producers then adapted it, and what follows is what they had actually built, documented in 2024.
From the 2024 vermicompost capitalisation. The first two are farmers’ own before-and-after reports, not measured trial results.
What producers built, and what it takes
Five kinds of vermicomposter, and when to use which
Producers built five different designs. Each is set out with its costs, so a farmer can pick according to space and budget rather than copying the centre.
- Yellow drum, 20 litres. Durable, cheap, saves space, but small volume. For starting out. 3,500 to 6,000 Ar
- Uncemented brick, cheap but does not last. For starting out. 5,520 to 10,320 Ar
- Cemented brick, large volume and durable, materials cost more. For production and sale. 18,520 to 32,820 Ar
- Raised planks, large volume, costly and slow to build. For production and sale. 118,000 to 209,000 Ar
- Wooden boxes, easy materials, space saving, but short lived and small. For starting out. 4,200 to 8,800 Ar
The recipe, and the conditions it needs
One part green matter, one part dry matter, two parts manure, plus water. The more worms inoculated, the faster the decomposition.
- Precomposting about 10 days, with the material moved after two days for the worms to work on
- Vermicomposting 1.5 to 2 months. It is mature when you can no longer recognise what went in
- Success factors: aeration, a bed height of 20 cm, temperature around 15 to 25 degrees, and shelter from sun, heat and rain
- Never feed it spicy, fatty or acidic matter
- Eisenia foetida is the worm. A trial of Eudrilus eugeniae with IRD and the LRI in 2020 and 2021 found it less productive
What producers say changed
Production generally rises, but it depends how the transition is made: producers who stop chemical fertiliser abruptly see a slight dip.
- Produce keeps longer. Potatoes from one week to 45 days, up to three months. Tomatoes from one week to two
- Soil texture improves. Less compact, better moisture retention, which cuts irrigation for some crops
- Fewer pest attacks, taking treatments from three per crop down to one or none
- Nutrient content: 11.191% carbon, 1.213% nitrogen, 0.54% phosphorus, 1.15% potassium, very high microbial activity, fine and friable structure
The constraints, and the fixes farmers found
Every constraint in the capitalisation comes paired with what producers did about it, which is the part that makes it replicable.
- Not enough green matter: plant live hedges of tithonia and tephrosia, and use crop residues and kitchen waste
- Not enough vermicompost: combine it with other composts, the 45-day, the 7-day and the liquid
- It takes too much time, between precompost and upkeep: put the hedges close by
- No room for a bed: use a yellow drum, or share a vermicomposter across the farmer organisation
Photo: Fert
Photo: Fert
What it costs, and what a region makes in a year
Making 100 kg
- 21,750 Ar average cost to produce 100 kg of vermicompost
- 6,800 Ar for the manure. Raw materials for 100 kg are 40 kg fresh matter, 25 kg dry matter and 85 kg manure
- 2.3 person-days of labour: collection, preparation, upkeep, inoculation, sorting and harvest
- 6,500 Ar day rate used in the costing
- 800 to 900 kg from one cubic metre of bed
- 1 to 1.5 tonnes Ceffel output per fortnight in 2020
Average annual production by region
- Analamanga 1,878.8 kg
- Haute Matsiatra 1,803.4 kg
- Vakinankaratra 1,098.0 kg
- Amoron’i Mania 888.85 kg
- Itasy 677.8 kg
- About 1 kg of worm supplied to a relay farmer at diffusion
Photo: Fert
“We really need vermicompost, because it raises our production and it raises our income too. If we used simple boxes before, we now have a small room specially for making it. On potato we see significant benefits, because production has doubled, thanks also to the seed coming from Ceffel.”
From innovation to adaptation
How the practice spread
How a technique gets from a research centre to a village
Not a straight line. Twelve years of trials, three rebuilds of the beds, a worm species comparison, and one decision in 2015 that changed everything: supply producers with boxes of worms rather than only with advice.
The chain has three links and they all matter. Ceffel trains the relay farmers in agroecology and supplies the worms. Relay farmers demonstrate what they learned in their own village and share the skill with other members. Technicians and local agricultural advisers give the technical follow-up. Then a fourth thing happens that no one plans: producers pass knowledge between themselves, run exchange visits, collaborate on production and marketing, and bring the non-adopters round.
The factors that make adoption stick are unglamorous and specific: training, the presence of local advisers, exchanges between producers, diligence in preparing and checking the compost and the worms, a supply of worms and materials such as cement, and the gift of worms between members of a farmer organisation and to people outside it.
“After Ceffel’s awareness work we were convinced and we adopted it. It has cut what we spend on chemical fertiliser, which is expensive, and it has restored the fertility of soils that had already been degraded by using it. If others in the association want to produce vermicompost, we are ready to give them worms.”
Vermicompost introduced at Ceffel. First trial with the earthworm Eisenia foetida, and training with TATA. Output: 5 kg a fortnight from three or four boxes.
Collaboration with the Université Libre de Bruxelles on agroecology and agrobiology, covering fertiliser and treatment including vermicompost use.
Exchange with Papa bio after its open day visit. Production and use begin across the centre’s own crops. Trials on carrot and potato to establish the dose, compared with manure and ordinary compost, followed by demonstration plots.
Bed materials multiplied and improved to raise output. Mass diffusion begins, and the centre starts supplying producers with boxes of worms. The “Lombric pour tous” training for relay farmers of the Fifata group starts in 2015.
The beds change scale again, to 1 to 1.5 tonnes a fortnight. A trial of Eudrilus eugeniae with IRD and the LRI finds it less productive than Eisenia foetida.
Photo: Fert
Women and young people
Over the whole project 3,127 women and 3,270 young people were reached, and in 2025 both groups passed their targets, 1,428 women against 920 and 1,354 young people against 1,104. Depending on the group monitored, women make up 42 to 47% of the beneficiaries who adopted the practices and young people 37.5 to 48%. Their participation was pushed in the technical training, on relay farming, black soldier fly, compost and onion, and in the local trials, where women and young people took part in the learning, the decisions and the spreading of results.
Forty women and young people took part in the decisions on launching and running the local experiments. At the regional organisations, women who have been trained are progressively taking on the dissemination of trial results, which is the step that turns attendance into authority.
In the agricultural colleges, equal opportunity between girls and boys is designed in from recruitment, where the question is discussed with the parents of girls so that the conditions of enrolment are reassuring and fair. Practical work takes account of the differences between girls and boys while valuing the complementarity of their roles, which has brought a more balanced participation in fieldwork, with girls involving themselves fully in the agroecological transition.
Two colleges as teaching farms
Trials ran on the teaching farms of the Ambalavao and Ambondromisotra agricultural colleges, both part of the Fekama network, with students taking part and their trainers supervising. The trials are built into the practical training, so girls and boys develop the habits of observing, experimenting and analysing alongside the practices themselves. Graduates of the Fekama colleges have gone on to spread practices suited to their own conditions among neighbouring farms.
At Ambondromisotra, a session with the nine college administrators, three women and five young people among them, went through which agroecological practices work on the college’s own teaching farm, what needs improving, and how to strengthen it as a practical support for training young people.
The results went public
Thirty sites and 1,549 participants
The thirty farmer-managed agroecological sites are the permanent version: several practices side by side in one place, plus a counter where members can buy worms, seedlings and seed to start.
Farmer field schools handle the learning by doing. After theory and practice on making vermicompost, relay farmers set up production sites to master it and pass it on to interested members. In total, 1,549 people took part in local peer events in 2025, against a final target of 1,275, and a further 1,132 in the six months to June 2026.
The Ceffel technical day
On 16 December 2025, more than 120 people came to the Ceffel centre: producers from the Fifata organisations, researchers, technical advisers and institutional representatives, with CIRAD, Fofifa and IRD among the research partners.
Five field trial stations, visited as a rotating circuit, with researchers and producers presenting each trial together. The result was a genuine strengthening of exchange between research and field, and better mutual understanding of each side’s constraints.
Sector strategy and programme learning
A national potato workshop in April 2025 with Fert, FN3PT and sector actors, on the in vitro culture laboratory and production greenhouses, the outline of a quality manual and cash plan, and each partner organisation’s seed needs. Every region sent two producers and one technician.
The team also took part in the FORI operational sub-committee on 7 May 2025, the FORI Steering Committee on 3 June, and the AgriCord capitalisation webinar on 30 September.
And in the final months
In 2026 the work reached institutions as well as farms: an advocacy workshop with MIASA, the ministry of agriculture and food sovereignty, on setting up participatory guarantee systems, and a GIZ workshop on agroecological fruit and vegetables. Santatra Ravelomanantsoa, the Fofifa researcher who accompanied the on-farm trials throughout, won the Fondation FARM prize for 2026, presented the work at the FARM conference and at Fert’s conference at the Paris international agriculture show, and went on an exchange visit co-organised by Fert and FARM that produced further ideas for action research in Madagascar.
Five advocacy products were published and circulated over the project, against a target of five. Eight capitalisation products were produced, against a target of twenty. The shortfall is acknowledged in the final report: the original figure proved ambitious next to the pace of production actually possible, and the effort went instead into running the trials, training producers and relay farmers, and spreading the innovations directly.
What it means going forward
A method, a network and a supply of worms
The project closed on 30 June 2026, and what it built is not primarily a set of findings. It is a working research system: relay farmers trained in both technique and teaching, field advisers who now know how to run a trial, a written guide so the next trial does not repeat the last one’s mistakes, and thirty sites where results are visible without anyone having to convene a meeting.
The vermicompost story is the argument for patience. Introduced in 2008 with one recommendation, it took until 2015 for mass diffusion to start, and the decisive move was logistical rather than technical: supplying producers with boxes of worms. Producers then adapted the beds to their own space and budget, which is why five designs exist rather than one.
Commercialisation is where the year’s setbacks landed. The PROCHIMAD agreement failed on potato calibres, which is a production question as much as a marketing one, and deliveries to Tamatave were suspended over late and unpaid invoices. The Rwanda and Côte d’Ivoire visits were chosen for exactly that gap, and what the delegations brought back, collective marketing through cooperatives, a certified seed scheme, participatory guarantee systems and access to storage and credit, was the agenda for the closing months, and remains the agenda for what comes next.
Also under way
The GENESS consortium with CIRAD, on producers' access to quality basic seed of adapted varieties.
Dinaammic, an EU DeSIRA project with Ceffel, Fifata and Fert as co-applicants, running participatory varietal trials on rainfed rice with CIRAD and training farmers to multiply seed. Some of its activities have benefited RAITRA farmers directly, through training places and starter seed.
Exchanges between Ceffel and French agricultural professionals, Fert administrators, the FN3PT technical team on potato and the company IFO on apple, which strengthened the technical and management skills of Ceffel’s staff and elected officers.
What happens after June 2026
The work does not stop with the grant. Spreading the agroecological innovations and rolling out the action-research approach continue inside the Fifata group, carried by the regional farmer organisations, Fekama and Cap Malagasy, with Fert’s support. The relay farmers, the agroecological sites, the peer exchanges and the farmer organisations themselves are the channels that keep it moving.
Fert, with Fifata, Ceffel, the Malagasy NGO GSDM and the national farmer organisation Soa, applied to the DeSIRA+OI programme to continue the action-research dynamic. The project was selected and is due to start at the end of 2026, taking over part of what RAITRA was doing.
Resources
Download the outputs
This project is part of the FORI programme (Farmer-led Research and Innovation), implemented by the AgriCord Alliance with the financial support of the European Union and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS).
