Table 1

Table 1. Relative strengths and weaknesses of tools and methods for scaling out.


Tool or method	Strengths	Weaknesses

Site similarity analysis	Simple tools available Conceptually accessible	May oversimplify Criteria for similarity often subjective

Interfacing GIS with models	Allows examination of time trends, including climatic risk Can express outputs in terms of specific variables of interest to stakeholders	Dependent on quality of model Requires specialists to implement

Land type and farmer categories	Outputs conceptually accessible Outputs suitable for use by extension workers and farmer experimenters	Outputs possibly too subjective Labor-intensive data acquisition May ignore interactions across land types within a household

Participatory extension, e.g., whole family training	Outputs readily accessible to farm families Can be scaled up in terms of organizational capacity required for implementation	Deals only with the family as a unit, does not extend to collective action at the community level Does not have an explicit spatial dimension