A Comparative Study of the Perceptions of Urban and Rural Farmer Field School Participants in Peru

Urban Harvest Working Paper Series. Paper 4, may 2007

The importance of subjective research methods in development and research programs is vital in order to have a more holistic understanding of certain realities. This study uses Q methodology as a tool to investigate subjectivity and to study the perceptions of rural and urban producers. The aim is to determine whether the perceptions of Farmer Field School (FFS) participants from urban areas differ from their rural counterparts, particular in reference to time management. The study confirms that the social, economic and geographical environments where these two groups are found indeed influence their daily lives as well as their different perceptions. In addition, the study found that there are someoverlapping perceptions and values among urban and rural FFS participants in regard to their social and human capital, which may in turn influence their attitude towards FFS. The perceptions these producers share reflect their objective reality, which is evident in many research studies. However, in this study anomalies were found in which some urban participants shared ‘rural’ perceptions and some rural participants having ‘urban’ perceptions. A clear dichotomy of urban and rural producers does not exist, however thereare ‘urban’ style perceptions defined by the majority of urban participants, as well as ‘rural’ style perceptions, shared by most of the rural participants.