SA PPLPP's Understanding of Good Practices (GPs)
GP Briefs & Notes
A commonly used definition for ‘Good Agricultural Practices’ reads as – GAP, implies available knowledge to addressing environmental, economic and social sustainability for on-farm production and post production processes resulting in safe and healthy food and non-food agricultural products.
A good practice asserts that the method, process or activity that has been adopted is more effective at delivering a particular outcome. It can also be defined as the more efficient and effective way of accomplishing a task or set of tasks, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves over time for large number of people.Good practices are an attempt to better understand what works (and what does not work), how, why and in what conditions.
From our own first attempts to identify potential GPs within the livestock sector, we learn that it normally covers three aspects namely:
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Technology option(s) / Management option / Extension message,
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Delivery mechanism or approach,
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Suitability to circumstances.
It is the right mix of these three aspects which lead to a Good Practice. We also learnt that it is important to distinguish in terms of overall orientation namely commodity (animal production) versus livelihood oriented. From a perspective of pro-poor –in favour of, in the interest of-, a livelihood orientation is advocated.
While identifying and documenting the potential Good Practices, we came across a number of practices, which may not completely qualify the above mentioned three criterion or have not been practiced over a proven period of time. However these practices are being adopted by some communities who have a belief in them being pro-poor or are effective in a particular place/situation. We have intended to capture these practices as Potential GP Notes, which through time may provide relevant results and data to qualify as Good Practices.
Within FAO there is the so-called ‘Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development'
(SARD) initiative which seeks to build capacity of poor rural communities to become aware of and adopt Good Practices that facilitate the transition to sustainable agriculture and rural development. The key concepts (SARD) with regard to Good Practices as has been shown through research and evaluation are:
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Proven outstanding results,
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Effective and sustainable,
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Applicable in and Adapted to different situations.
How to Contribute
You can share a Potential Good Practice with us along with supporting pictures. Refer to the
A potential GP Note based on the above mentioned guidelines can be submited using the following link: Submit a Potential Good Practice
