Abstract
Investment in agricultural extension, as well as its design and practice, are usually based on the assumption that agricultural science generates technology (“applied science“), which extension experts transfer to “users“. This model negates local knowledge and creativity, ignores farmers' self-confidence and social energy as important sources of change, and, in its most linear expression, does not pay attention to information from and about farmers as a condition for anticipating utilization.
In practice, farmers rely on knowledge developed by farmers, reinvent ideas brought from outside and actively integrate them into complex farming decisions. Effective extension seems based on checks and balances that match intervention power with farmers' countervailing power, and mobilize farmers' creativity and participation in technology development and exchange.
Alternative models for informing extension investment, design, and practice stress adult learning and its facilitation. The farmer is seen as an expert and farm development as driven by farmers' energy and communication. The article is a case study of a rare large scale attempt to use such an alternative model. It suggests that a shift to knowledgeintensive sustainable practices requires a learning process based on participation and empowerment.
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Additional information
The authors want to express their gratitude to Ms. Jennifer Dunn, Blackstone, Queensland, Australia, whoedited a 50-page report, written by the authors on the occasion of a study visit to Indonesia by the first author in 1991, into the first version of the present article. We are also grateful to Dr. Patricia Matteson of Iowa State University for helpful comments on the third version, and to Dr. Russ Dilts, the team leader of Indonesia's IPM in rice program, for his comments on the fourth. The authors with to report the latter's view that the present article reflects the program as it was in 1991 and that it has since moved on. Although we have made an attempt to take into account his comments in this fifth and last version, especially with respect to the conclusions about the institutional framework, we realize this does not adequately reflect the program's development in the last two years. Finally we would like to thank Dr. Haynes, the editor ofAgriculture and Human Values, Dr. Lori-Ann Thrupp, the guest-editor of this volume, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Niels Röling (1937) is a professor at Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands, with an MSc in Rural Sociology from Wageningen and a Ph.D. in Communication from Michigan State University. His research interest has moved from the diffusion of innovations (Röling,et al., 1976),via targeting technology development to poverty alleviation (Röling, 1988), and agricultural knowledge systems analysis (e.g., Röling, 1990), to an interpretationist approach of sustainable natural resource management (e.g., Röling, 1992a). He is currently part of a research program on “Knowledge Systems for Sustainable Agriculture“, which focuses on the facilitation of social learning and on the linkage between “soft“ platforms for decision making and “hard“ ecosystems.
Elske van de Fliert (1960) obtained her MSc in Biology from the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, and her Ph.D. in Agricultural Sciences from Wageningen Agricultural University. She participated in an evaluation study of FAO's program on IPM in irrigated rice in Sri Lanka (Van de Fliert and Matteson, 1989 and 1990) and worked for two years as an FAO expert on a field evaluation study of the Indonesian IPM program in irrigated rice in Central Java, where her work also comprised rat control (Van de Fliertet al, 1993). Her published dissertation reports the results of the field evaluation (Van de Fliert, 1993). She lives in Jokyakarta, Indonesia, with her husband and son, and is currently a free lance development consultant.
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Röling, N., van de Fliert, E. Transforming extension for sustainable agriculture: The case of integrated pest management in rice in Indonesia. Agric Hum Values 11, 96–108 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01530451
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01530451