"The research examines the possibilities of new digital technologies along with radio to facilitate adaptive management processes through rapid feedback to help ensure that agricultural development projects are farmer-centered, and meet the needs of those they intend to serve. Grounded in assessing Farm Radio International’s Listening Post—a methodology for collecting real-time, unfiltered feedback from farmers through a multi-channel platform linked to radio—the research highlights barriers to success and articulates lessons learned during the process of designing and implementing the model [...] The research demonstrates that linking a mobile-based crowd-sourcing tool with radio is effective at ensuring engagement from a large number of farmers. The radio stations offer a simple way to recruit participants from among the regular listeners of farmer radio programs. Also, the radio stations tend to be trusted sources of agricultural information among farmers, increasing motivation to participate. Further, the radio programs offer an easy way to close feedback loops by disseminating information about actions that stakeholders are taking in response to feedback. The Listening Post faced many of the same challenges documented by organizations utilizing similar tools—it was difficult to incentivize stakeholders to adequately respond to farmers, and competing motivations between extension officers, farmers, funders and partner organizations made it difficult to collect high-quality information that was usable and actionable. Moreover, an overarching focus on developing and implementing the technology and engaging a large number of farmers at the exclusion of other factors meant that many of the processes and mechanisms for effectively using the data collected and for responding to what farmers were saying weren’t fully developed. Despite these issues, there is significant evidence that the Listening Post model holds potential to act as a conduit for civic action if the correct stakeholders are engaged from the outset, if mechanisms for analyzing and disseminating relevant data from the platform to partners, local stakeholders and farmers is further refined, and if stakeholders ensure farmers can effectively use the technology." (Executive summary)