From researching about farmers to researching with farmers: Experiences of the University of Limpopo’s Centre for Rural Community Empowerment (CRCE) in Limpopo Province, South Africa

Through the Centre for Rural Community Empowerment (CRCE), students, academics and community members at the University of Limpopo interact in shaping and improving the training of students, impact of university knowledge on community members and continuous improvement of the university curricular in an action oriented way. CRCE recruits postgraduate students from the various disciplines of the School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences to do internship in the centre. Postgraduate students develop their proposals in line with the real problems faced by small scale farmers while academics provide supervisory support to the students. The centre places students in rural villages for a period of three months to identify problems and opportunities for action research. Action research and various participatory methodologies are used to solve complex challenges of rural communities. Through these interactions two CRCE sub-centres known as development centres and farmer platforms have been established to allow a bottom up approach towards solving relevant community agricultural problems, challenges and needs.