This article reflects on our experience of using participatory development processes to strengthen business practices of fish farmers in Western Uganda. We aimed to empower the fish farmers through collective participation so that they become critically aware of the realities that impeded the development of their fish farming enterprises, a process in Freirian terms described as conscientisation. We reflect on the challenges we encountered in our effort to foster participation and consequently conscientisation of the fish farmers, and the considerations that are important to make, when carrying out participatory agricultural development projects. We ask ourselves: how far did we go in achieving our avowed aim of engendering collective farmer participation. To what extent did we achieve an effective participatory agriculture development practice? We focus our reflection on our efforts at fostering collective participation in doing farmer participatory market research. We begin by exploring the literature related to the meaning of participatory development and conscientisation on one hand and the complexity of achieving community participation on other. We then explicate our effort at engendering participation during the farmer participatory market research process. We conclude the article with a critical reflection on our practice.