A project to diversify agriculture by encouraging cotton production has been started in The Gambia and it was appraised recently by members of a Food Strategy Team in association with the Ministry of Agriculture. The objective of the rapid appraisal was to identify constraints in its expansion, to examine the distribution of its benefits between and within households and to assess its potential as a cash crop alternative to groundnuts. The methodology of the appraisal is described, which involved investigating the organisation of farm labour and technical aspects of cultivation.