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Options for Enabling Policies and Regulatory Environments | 483
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Farmers may innovate at the system level. For example, farmers on the very densely inhabited Adja Plateau in Benin have developed an "oil palm fallow" rotation that allows them to suppress Imperata cylindrica, restore soil fertility for annual crops, and make money from distilling palm wine once the palms are cut down (Brouwers, 1993). But traditional knowledge may have weaknesses such as attributing plant disease to rain and thus foregoing useful management measures (Almekinder and Louwaars, 1999) or an inability to respond to rapidly changing circumstances, e.g., climate change. Experience with multiagent approaches suggests that mobilizing the intelligence of a great many actors to address a new and complex problem can be an effective and efficient way to solve such systemic complexity (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993; Gilbert and Troitzsch, 1999). Policy options for promoting endogenous development include decentralization; use of rapid rural appraisals and participatory approaches; empowerment initiatives; multistakeholder processes; and strengthening farmer organizations. Decentralization as in India or Uganda, however, may strengthen and widen the base for democratic participation in agricultural research decision making, open new opportunities for collaboration in agroenterprise innovations and service delivery, address specific local development problems, and improve responsiveness to the needs of the poor (e.g., SNV and CEDELO, 2004). Rapid rural appraisal (RRA) and participatory approaches may supply more accurate or insightful information than questionnaire surveys or more relevant or better adapted technologies than the experiments of scientists conducted in conditions and places remote from the fields (e.g., Collinson, 2000). Participation has long been dominant in pro-poor development approaches and may range from simple consultation to support for autonomous decision-making (e.g., Pretty, 1994; Biggs, 1995). RRA and participatory approaches may be poorly performed and insufficient, however, for addressing the multiple scales of policy intervention required (Biggs, 1978; Biggs, 1995; Cleaver, 2001; Cooke and Kothari, 2001). The challenge in meeting development and sustainability goals is to create complementarity that draws on best practice across the range of pro-poor approaches and policies (Biggs, 1982; Biggs, 1989; Bunders, 2001; Ceccarelli et al., 2002; Chema et al., 2003). Participatory Technology Development (PTD) (Jiggins and De Zeeuw, 1992) is a concrete approach to the design of complementary action that is relevant for achieving development and sustainability goals but has some negatives associated with it. With very small windows of opportunity, it is not easy to reduce poverty by enhancing productivity at the farm level, even through PTD. The challenge is to stretch those windows through access to markets, better prices, the development of services, and the removal of extractive practices and patrimonial networks. Given opportunities, West African farmers have time and again considerably increased their production without major technical change. Technology becomes important once framework conditions begin to improve (Box 7-3). Empowerment. The corollary of recognizing resource-poor farmers as partners in complementary and collaborative approaches to development is to accept their empowerment. |
Box 7-3. The Convergence of Sciences Program (CoS) in Ghana and Benin. To ensure that the research problems chosen were based on the needs and opportunities of resource-poor farmers, CoS pioneered a new pathway for science that used technography, diagnostic studies, and with farmer participatory experimental field research (van Huis et al., 2007). A key component was ex-ante impact assessment and pre-analytical choice making that optimized sensitivity to context and avoided cul-de-sac path dependency. Technography (Richards, 2001) was used to map the coalitions of actors, processes, client groups, framework conditions and contextual factors at a macro level, so as to identify realistic opportunities. Given the small windows of opportunity, technography identified space for change. Diagnostic studies (Nederlof et al., 2004; Röling et al., 2004) ensured that research outcomes would work in the local context, be appropriate to prevailing land tenure, labor availability and gender, and take into account farmers' opportunities, livelihood strategies, culture, and felt needs. The diagnostic studies also identified and established forums of stakeholders for learning from a concrete experimental activity, and gave farmers a say in the design of field experiments. CoS conducted 21 experiments with small farmers on themes such as soil fertility and weed management, crop agrobiodiversity and integrated pest management (IPM). The studies showed that participatory low external input technology development within carefully identified windows of opportunity can be beneficial. However, the researchers also ran into the limitations of this approach and started to include experiments with creating space for change through institutional innovation. Soil fertility improvement depends on land tenure (Saïdou et al., 2007). They negotiated land use rules between migrant farmers and landowners that allowed improving soil management practices. In Ghana, an organization was established to procure Neem seeds from the North as a condition for small-scale cocoa farmers to reduce their use of synthetic pesticides (Dormon et al., 2007). This in turn stimulated collective arrangements for processing Neem seeds because their use in maize mills is unacceptable due to their bitter taste. With very small windows of opportunity, it is not easy to reduce poverty by enhancing productivity at the farm level, even through PTD. The challenge is to stretch those windows through access to markets, better prices, the development of services, and the removal of extractive practices and patrimonial networks. Given opportunities, West African farmers have time and again considerably increased their production without major technical change. Technology becomes important once framework conditions begin to improve. Source: Hounkonnou et al., 2006; Van Huis et al., 2007. |
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