Network Papers No. 65 66 67 68 69
Network Paper 65: ORGANISING
FOR LOCAL-LEVEL WATERSHED MANAGEMENT: LESSONS FROM RÍO CABUYAL WATERSHED,
COLOMBIA Watershed management involves the integrated management
of a multitude of common and privately owned resources such as crop land,
pastures, forests and water. Each resource has an associated complex of
often conflicting interests held by 'stakeholders' inside and outside
the watershed. Identifying and negotiating these interests is therefore
an important element in watershed management.
This paper draws on the experience of the Río Cabuyal watershed
in southern Colombia, to discuss the role of local organisations in watershed
management and certain principles which should underlie such management.
It lays particular emphasis on the importance of monitoring and of the
development of new skills by local level management organisations. It
also discusses relationships between 'within' watershed and external users
of resources and between external support agencies and watershed residents.
This paper describes the development and use of a methodology
for quantifying indigenous technical knowledge. Matrix ranking is adapted
and used in systematic interviews with experienced farmers to generate
numerical data on crop performance. Data sets compiled from a number of
interviews are then subjected to statistical analysis. This enables hypotheses
to be tested and agronomic parameters to be quantified without field trials.
The methodology was developed to complement on-farm and station research.
It may also have potential as an alternative to field trials because it
provides information that is directly relevant to the farm situation at
a far lower cost than field trials. This is particularly true for perennial
crops, as conventional trials for these may take many years to yield data.
Though the methodology has only been tested in the field of agronomy,
the concept may have wider applications in a number of other disciplines
in which indigenous technical knowledge is important in the research and
development process. The paper therefore comments on both the risks and
the potential of using the methodology.
with a note on
Land ownership in Brazil is mostly dominated by large estates,
except in the three, relatively small, southern states of Paraná, Santa
Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. In this southern region there are a large
number of small-scale agricultural enterprises. Most of these base their
production on one main annual crop (usually maize, wheat, common beans
or soybeans) and animal production. Pigs and poultry are farmed on a contract
basis while dairy production, which has become increasingly important
as soybean cultivation has become less viable for small-scale producers,
is far more diversified. Milk sales provide the only reliable and regular
income source for many of the households in this area and thus are vital
to overall livelihoods. Milk production has traditionally been the responsibility
of women.
Over the past decade a range of different developments
has put increasing pressure on the milk sector. First, the Mercosul free
trade agreement between Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay has opened
up markets to foreign competition. This has particularly affected the
markets for processed dairy products. Second, the Brazilian economy has
been going through a process of adjustment. Implementation of the National
Adjustment Plan began in 1994 but pressure has been mounting since 1991
when the government ceased to intervene in price setting in the dairy
sub-sector. Third, poor soil fertility management and the increasing price
of capital inputs have reduced the viability of soybean production, encouraging
more farmers to turn to milk. Fourth, aggressive expansion by the Italian
dairy company, Parmalat, has altered the traditional structure of the
overall dairy industry and as a result dairy companies have been putting
increasing pressure on small producers.
Although the situation remains fluid, two main responses
to these changes are noted. The first involves the promotion of productivity-enhancing
measures by NGOs and dairy development projects. The second is a spontaneous
political reaction by farmers who have come together in a variety of modern
and traditional organisations to resist change and promote their own vision
of development.
This paper reviews the attempts of the NGO, World Neighbors,
and its indigenous successor, the Mag'uugmad Foundation Inc., to develop
the local institutional capacity of farmer organisations on the island
of Cebu in the Philippines, building on a highly successful programme
of farmer- led extension of agroforestry technologies. The paper describes
the history of the programme from its inception in 1982, and considers
the grounds for its success in the transformation of the farming system
over a wide area of the Cebu uplands. It then examines progress to date
in the area of local institutional development, and assesses the likelihood
of the substantial transfer of management functions to the community.
The topics of 'local institutional development' and 'local
capacity building' are central concerns in the current literature on grassroots
organisations, though there is remarkably little agreement as to the meanings
of the terms, let alone the means for the attainment of the objectives
they encapsulate. Part of the reason for this lies in divergences of opinion
as to the relevant frame of reference. To one group of theorists, local
institutional development is synonymous with organisation building while,
to another, the focus is on the creation of an institutionally complex
and competitive environment rather than the consolidation of the individual
organisation. To some extent, this contrast reflects differences in proximity
to the implementing agency. NGO activists, for example, tend to draw on
variants of consensus theory to guide grassroots capacity building. They
view institutional development as, in essence, an educational process
involving the inculcation of awareness and solidarity. To those more concerned
with the broader policy context, on the other hand, the notion of conflict
provides a key conceptual tool, and the progress of institutional change
is likely to be seen as relating as much to conflict between actors as
to their mutually supportive interactions. In reviewing the progress of
institutional development in the case study situation, the paper assesses
the relative merits of these contrasting perspectives for illuminating
the processes of change.
The intervention model adopted by World Neighbors and the
Mag'uugmad Foundation has followed an approach which can be characterised
as 'technically-driven' rather than 'social action' in its primary orientation.
That is to say, the main focus has been on externally generated, though
locally adapted, technological innovation as a tangible basis on which
to build farmer organisations. At least in certain locations, this strategy
has brought significant benefits. Elsewhere, however, an essentially similar
approach has met with less success. An examination of these contrasting
outcomes helps to pinpoint reasons for the variable effectiveness of the
approach. A number of factors are identified, including: variations in
soil quality and access to forest products off-farm; proximity to urban
markets; tenurial constraints; population density; and migrant labour
opportunities.
Of particular interest as a factor in explaining the rapid
diffusion of technology has been the role of incentive payments to farmer
extensionists. The payment of honoraria was built into the programme from
the start and this remains a significant, if diminishing, item of expenditure.
While such incentives undoubtedly facilitated the transfer of technology,
they remain controversial in a number of ways. By underwriting the risk
of early innovators, they not only impose a barrier to farmer-to-farmer
extension, but also create the potential (perhaps as yet little realised)
for differentiation of interests within a hitherto largely homogeneous
peasant farming population, to the detriment of the development of community
solidarity.
The process of institutional development over a period
of 15 years has been characterised in the literature as a three-stage,
planned and mutually-supportive sequence, involving the ordered transfer
of management capacity from expatriate NGO to peoples' organisation. While
this characterisation is certainly pertinent, close examination of the
events in question shows that it is only partial, and that a more complex
process of interaction has in fact occurred, in which conflicts of interest
between the various parties have played an important, if often unacknowledged,
role in influencing the progress of events. To understand this sequence
requires a different register of enquiry from the largely consensual models
conventionally applied to the understanding of NGO-inspired local institutional
development.
The article concludes by considering the lessons which
this case study offers for the definition of future capacity building
strategies. One issue is that principles of local institutional development
are often at odds with their modes of financing, and there is thus a need
to harmonise funding arrangements and structures of management development.
This in turn requires a framework of action which goes beyond the individual
agency, and trades greater pressures to performance upon NGOs for community
organisations for greater recognition of the investment costs involved.
A second set of conclusions concerns the relationship between technology
transfer and institutional development. By and large, the study endorses
the leading role of technology in the process of solidarity building,
and supports the 'minimalist' strategy of institutional growth in which
organisations are developed around activities that are single function
and task-oriented. In the Philippines context during the period in question,
it is most unlikely that a social action approach would have provided
a qualitatively superior base on which to build local solidarity. The
case study also endorses the principle of farmer-led extension as a basis
for institutional development, although the specific circumstances of
the case study situation need to be recognised. It is concluded that while
a technology driven process using farmer-to-farmer extension is neither
a universal possibility nor a guaranteed mechanism for institutional development,
it does, potentially, offer a base on which to build quite wide-ranging
community solidarity.
This paper summarises the findings of a recently completed
project which examined the conduct of seed regulation in developing countries
and produced a set of guidelines for seed regulatory reform. The three
areas of seed regulation included in the study were: public sector plant
breeding (particularly the management of variety testing); variety regulation
(registration, performance testing and release); and seed quality control
(seed certification and seed testing). Adjustment to seed regulatory frameworks
is necessary because of significant changes in national seed systems.
These changes include: reductions in budget for public agricultural research;
the failure of many seed parastatals; increasing concern about plant genetic
diversity; pressure for the establishment of plant variety protection;
the increasing contributions of commercial seed enterprises; and the emergence
of innovative local level variety development and seed production initiatives.
There are a variety of reasons why current public seed
regulation is unsatisfactory. It is not efficiently organised, often uses
inappropriate standards, does not offer opportunities for farmer and seed
producer participation, and is not sufficiently transparent. At the same
time there are a number of options for regulatory reform. In plant breeding,
more emphasis should be placed on decentralising variety testing, breeding
for particular niches, and making site selection, trial management and
analysis more representative of farmers' conditions. In variety regulation,
simpler registration procedures are required, and the demands of plant
variety protection should not be allowed to bias or limit the development
and use of public and farmer varieties. Variety performance testing for
release should be made more flexible. In seed quality control, standards
should be re-examined for their relevance to particular farming conditions,
and much of the responsibility for monitoring seed quality should be passed
to seed producers and merchants, accompanied by well-defined public oversight
and enforcement mechanisms.
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by Helle Munk Ravnborg and Jacqueline A. Ashby
Network Paper 66: QUANTIFYING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE:
A RAPID METHOD FOR ASSESSING CROP PERFORMANCE WITHOUT FIELD TRIALS
by Anne K. de Villiers
Network Paper 67: SMALL-SCALE MILK PRODUCTION IN
SOUTHERN BRAZIL: THE CHALLENGES OF 'MODERNISATION'
by Andrea A. M. Gaifami and Régis da Cunha Belem
THE RURAL WORKERS' UNION MOVEMENT IN BRAZIL
by Peter P. Houtzager
Network Paper 68: INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL
ORGANISATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF FARMER-LED EXTENSION: THE AGROFORESTRY
PROGRAMME OF THE MAG'UUGMAD FOUNDATION
By David Brown and Caroline Korte
Network Paper 69: ALTERNATIVES FOR SEED REGULATORY
REFORM: An Analysis of Variety Testing, Variety Regulation and Seed Quality
Control
By Robert Tripp, Niels Louwaars, W. Joost van der Burg, D.S. Virk and
J.R. Witcombe
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