An Investigation on The Application of the Participatory Rural Appraisal Approach in Determining Farmers’ Needs of Winterveldt Community, Tshwane Municipality, South Africa.

Purpose of the study was to investigate the application and outcomes of using participatory rural appraisal (PRA) in assessing farmer’s needs. The study, which was conducted in Northwest region of Pretoria in the Gauteng Province, revealed that participatory rural appraisal methods allow facilitators an opportunity to lend relevant support to farmers, in that during the implementation process, facilitators learn about the needs of farmers and therefore the requirements needed to fulfil those needs. The results indicated that while current agricultural programmes may reduce the problems encountered by farmers, challenges remain. It was further observed that, although the methods may be easy to implement, improper facilitation skills of the facilitators may affect the quality of the captured data. Strengths and weaknesses of methods in gathering farmer’s needs were studied. The challenges and practicality of applying each method were explored. The effectiveness of the methods to gather reliable data was also explored.