Abstract
Farmer experimentation with technologies, diverting from the official recommendations, highlights a common theme in the academic literature on agricultural research and development. Local knowledge and farmer- or demand-driven research have become watchwords of international development efforts, yet remarkably little farmer experimentation has made it into the sphere of formal agricultural research. Farmer practices, interests and experimentation are not systematically analysed, nor is there any serious testing of the effectiveness of farmers’ experiments and adaptations of technologies. International institutes for agricultural research – such as the members of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) – have adopted a changed discourse on farmers’ knowledge, yet their research practice appears surprisingly persistent and little influenced by farmers’ agendas. Drawing on fieldwork and studies on the adoption of agroforestry technologies in Malawi and building upon social science research into the institutional embedding of development discourses, this chapter analyses this incongruence between research discourse (farmer-oriented), and the institutional framework which continues to be geared towards the international research community. Building on the recognition that the institutional set-up and environment of agricultural research produces particular policies, discourses and outcomes, it is shown that, despite a changed discourse on research, change in organizations and research practices has been limited – with changes rarely going beyond rhetoric. Despite new development priorities, research institutes largely still speak to scientific audiences rather than with farmers. It is argued that for agricultural research institutions to adapt to the changing discourse on agricultural research, these institutions themselves need to change organizationally. The chapter critically discusses some recent organizational adaptations in agricultural research, and suggests further modifications so as to make international agricultural research more able to adapt to farmers’ practices and agendas.
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Notes
- 1.
The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF until 2002) is the world’s leading research institute for agroforestry research and development. Established in the 1970s, it joined the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in 1991 (www.worldagroforestrycentre.com). The author worked as an associated social scientist for the centre, and was based at Makoka and Chitedze research stations in Malawi from 2003 to 2006. The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers of this chapter for valuable comments.
- 2.
Since the 1980s, the “Green Revolution” has been critiqued, as its impact has been very uneven, and the technologies often failing to reach the poor. Additional problems include reduced and polluted groundwater supplies, agro-chemical induced health problems, reduction of bio-diversity and food quality, and increased dependency of smallholder farmers on markets (Hazell and Ramasamy 1991; Lipton and Longhurst 1989).
- 3.
There are a number of other agroforestry technologies, ranging from fodder banks to feed livestock, rotational woodlots, to the improvement of indigenous fruit trees (domestication, processing, marketing). Although a similar argument may be developed for these technologies, these technologies will not be discussed here.
- 4.
The three highest-ranking rural districts are Chiradzulu, Thyolo, and Mulanje, with population densities of 379, 343, and 256 persons per sq. km, respectively. On average, Malawi’s Southern Region had some 185 persons per sq. km in 2008 (NSO 2008).
- 5.
For the main staple crop, maize, yields ranged between 1 and 1.2 t/ha in the early 2000s (Benson et al. 2002). To be sure, the main drivers of agricultural productivity in Africa are soil fertility and climate. Although rainfall can be erratic, southern Malawi can be considered suitable for crop cultivation, with average rainfall ranging from 1,000 to 1,200 mm per annum (Kanyama-Phiri et al. 2000).
- 6.
Biomass transfer and improved fallows are promoted in Zambia and the Central Region of Malawi, where in many areas land is relatively abundant as compared to southern Malawi.
- 7.
To be sure, the case examples are not representative of all southern Malawi’s farming population. However, the aim of presenting these “apt illustrations” is not to present representative cases, but to illuminate wider social patterns and processes through the study of the particular. It is our understanding of the social processes as identified in the particular situation that allow us to understand similar (or contrasting) situations (see van Donge 2006).
- 8.
Mr. Chikoko is not the only one. Many Malawian farmers add fertilizer to their agroforestry field if they have the means to do so. They often do not believe nitrogen-fixing agroforestry technologies can actually work on their own.
- 9.
Flint varieties have kernels with a hard outer layer enclosing the soft endosperm.
- 10.
Furthermore, the taste of local maize is also said to be better and it is claimed there is more starch (“starch kwambiri”) in local maize. Therefore, farmers claim, local maize fetches a higher prize when sold locally.
- 11.
There is an exception. One farmers’ adaptation of agroforestry technology has been widely accepted by scientists: the reduction in the number of prunings of Gliricidia sepium in simultaneous intercropping. Initially, it was recommended that well-established Gliricidia trees be pruned five times a year. However, farmers appeared to be pruning only three times. Subsequent on-station trials revealed this practice to be just as effective, thus making it the official recommendation (Makumba et al. 2005). However, the most likely cause of this farmer adaptation – limited labour availability – was not taken up in further agroforestry research (see, for example, Makumba 2003).
- 12.
- 13.
Besides distrust between researchers and farmers, both adopters and agroforestry technologies sometimes became the victim of distrust and jealously in the communities where on-farm trails were conducted. As participating farmers reaped benefits that others did not get, intra-community relations sometimes became strained. In a number of villages in southern Malawi where I did research in 2004, people still recounted such experiences. They saw them as a cause of non-adoption of agroforestry technologies by those who had not participated in the on-farm trials.
- 14.
See: “More than 30 years of agroforestry research and development” at: www.worldagroforestrycentre.com (Accessed 20 Feb 2009).
- 15.
Chambers notes that, in principle, core funding allows for greater flexibility to respond to “changing realities, perceptions and opportunities” (2006, pp. 364). He continues that “it is a sad paradox that precisely when CGIAR’s mandate and context demand greater adaptability and opportunism, CGIAR’s core funding should be shrinking.” Barrett (2008) also argues for increased core funding to cover social science staff.
- 16.
In ICRAF Southern Africa, the indirect extension approach through training of trainers also suffered from the lack of follow-up. This was the result of limited resources available for extension as well as the persistent emphasis on research within the organization, as is evidenced by the prominence of scientific publication output in the organization’s performance evaluation system.
- 17.
ICRAF Southern Africa experienced a short-lived increase in the number of social scientists from 2003 to 2005 (see Table 10.4).
- 18.
Other social science methods, such as the qualitative methods deployed by anthropologists and sociologists, are less suited to the organizational requirements and cultures of research of the CGIAR. As Bellon et al. (2006) argue, biophysical scientists tend to be very skeptical about the manner in which social scientists acquire their data as well as the validity of data resulting from their qualitative methodologies.
- 19.
Some 70 interviews with ICRAF staff, extension officers and (predominantly) farmers currently and previously practicing agroforestry were done between March and July 2004. One of the areas covered villages in Thondwe Extension Planning Area (EPA). Here, major interventions had taken place such as Type II trials, intensive village workshops, training-of-trainers, and more, yet the fieldwork revealed very low rates of adoption. Interviews in villages (randomly sampled from lists of nurseries established) in the Chiradzulu district, where different partner organisations had been active in promoting agroforestry, revealed equally disappointing adoption rates. Finally, in Chiosya and Ntubwi, two so-called Pilot Scaling-Up Areas, there was no evidence that – besides very recently established ones – “agroforestry clubs” as mentioned in project documentation, were still active.
- 20.
A similar phenomenon has been described by Kiptot et al. (2007), who labelled farmers adopting agroforestry technologies for other reasons than improved farm productivity as “pseudo-adopters”.
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de Wolf, J.J. (2010). Innovative Farmers, Non-adapting Institutions: A Case Study of the Organization of Agroforestry Research in Malawi. In: German, L., Ramisch, J., Verma, R. (eds) Beyond the Biophysical. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8826-0_10
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