The Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge (CBIK), a Chinese NGO, has been promoting participatory approaches to technology development and extension in the animal husbandry sector in Gongshan County, Yunnan, China. Here, villagers’ livelihoods are based on mixed farming or agro-pastoralism where livestock has a central role. But all villages experience problems in animal raising which increase the costs and risks of livestock production. Although many practical technologies exist which could be helpful to farmers, these are not known of or adopted by both farmers and technicians. Many technicians had a poor understanding of villagers’ needs, and existing extension efforts lacked continuity; technologies often being demonstrated for one year with no follow-up the following year, and although adoption rates were low there was little systematic assessment of the reasons why.
