Network Papers No. 59a 59b 59c
FARMER-LED APPROACHES TO EXTENSION:
Papers presented at a Workshop in the Philippines, July 1995 Editorial Introduction
The majority of poor people in developing countries live
in rural areas, rely on agriculture for their employment and spend a high
proportion of their income on food. Population densities continue to increase
and land available for the expansion of agriculture is becoming increasingly
scarce. Moreover, labour constraints, particularly in households headed
by women, often limit farmers' ability to expand the area they cultivate.
Thus, sustainable increases in land and labour productivity in agriculture,
through technological and managerial innovation, continue to be crucial
means through which both poverty reduction and economic growth are sought.
In the past, public sector agricultural services in developing
countries played a vital role in promoting technological innovation in
agriculture. However, changes in the structure of the public sector, as
well as in the context in which it operates and in the likely nature of
future technological innovation, raise questions about whether the institutions
that supported the green revolution will be able to meet the challenges
of the continued need for increases in agricultural productivity (See,
for example, Antholt, C. (1994:4) 'Getting Ready for the Twenty-First
Century: Technical Change and Institutional Modernisation in Agriculture.'
World Bank Technical Paper No. 217, World Bank, Washington, DC. He suggests
that the impossibility of a repeat of the widespread effects of the green
revolution is due to constraints on the role that biotechnology can play
in this process, as well as physical limits on the further expansion of
land under cultivation and irrigation). It is likely that future gains
in agricultural productivity through technological innovation will have
to be more incremental, locally specific and directly geared towards specific
farmer constraints. This is particularly true for resource-poor farmers
operating in environments which cannot be unified through irrigation and
purchased inputs, which are remote from markets and political and urban
centres, and in which the natural resource base is fragile. The need for
locally-specific technological innovation means that, if agricultural
research and extension organisations are to be effective, their agendas
and outputs will have to be more demand-led than they were in the past.
In response to this situation, a number of organisations
have, over the last two decades, attempted to support the establishment
of poor-farmer responsive agricultural servicess. In many of these experimental
projects or programmes, farmers, rather than professional extensionists
or researchers, have acted as the principal agents of change. These experiments
appear to have had quite a high degree of success in terms of discovering
or identifying productivity enhancing technologies, which are then widely
adopted. They have also been able to do so at relatively low cost.
However, not only are such programmes still rare islands
in a sea of conventional programmes, but they also face many problems
of their own creation. In recognition of this, a one-week workshop was
organised by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the International
Institute for Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) and World Neighbors (WN) in
July 1995 with the aim of:
Fifty-one papers were submitted to the workshop. These,
together with the discussions held during the workshop, will be reflected
in a book to be published this year. Here, a selection of the papers are
presented in their entirety. These have been chosen to illustrate the
various methods currently being used in different parts of the world to
help ensure that research and extension agendas and activities are determined
by poor farmers. We have grouped them into three categories, although
there is considerable overlap between these. The first two groups of papers
describe projects or activities which are based on common methods. The
first group focuses on farmer-to-farmer extension, in which farmers are
the extension agents and outsiders facilitate their work. The second set
of papers describes various farmer research activities, supported by specialist
researchers and other professionals. The third group describes a collection
of other methods and mechanisms which are currently being used to increase
the responsiveness of previously conventional services.
The six papers in this group describe various aspects of
systems of extension in which farmers are the primary extension agents.
The Campesino-a-Campesino (farmer-to-farmer) sustainable agriculture
movement in Latin America is the most established and well known of these.
Eric Holt-Gimenez describes its evolution and expansion in Nicaragua and
subsequent spread to Mexico and Honduras, and looks at the support provided
by NGOs in its development. The author attempts to fathom whether the
movement's spread was dependent on the revolutions and economic crises
in the region during the 1970s or on the methodology itself. In so doing,
he provides much detail on the methods of organisation, communication,
promoter selection and training etc. adopted by the movement. He also
poses and seeks to answer the question of whether professionals can participate
in this process and, if so, how. He argues that it is indeed possible,
but that most technicians and other professionals need to be trained by
campesino promoters in order to do so successfully and a shift in their
management is also necessary. The author also provides guidelines to assist
external agents (i.e. non-farmers) who want to form such partnerships
with poor farmers.
Roland Bunch's paper summarises and updates much of the
material contained in his book Two Ears of Corn (1982). It describes
the principles upon which many farmer-to-farmer systems of extension are
now based, namely:
The paper by Nelson Sinaga and Stefan Wodicka describes
a farmer-based extension and participatory research system in the uplands
of Sumba Island, Indonesia - a very difficult area climatically, topographically,
demographically and agriculturally. The programme was started in 1981
by World Neighbors, but a few years later farmer leaders decided to form
an autonomous federation under what became known as the Tananua Foundation.
The World Neighbors' programme started by introducing basic soil and water
conservation practices to a few farmers and now serves nearly 3,000 farmers
in 30 village communities. It has developed many strategies to facilitate
the development and spread of farmer-led approaches to extension and research.
Each of these is described in the paper, and their effectiveness and the
problems they have posed to date are analysed. The programme's influence
on others involved in agriculture in the area is also described and a
rudimentary analysis of the cost-effectiveness of the programme is provided.
Bishnu Hari Pandit's paper describes the Nepal Agroforestry
Foundation's (NAF) approach to farmer-led extension. This NGO has tried
many types of extension and has now settled on a farmer-to-farmer approach.
The paper describes the five steps on which NAF's extension programme
is based, namely:
The last two papers in this group are written by people
who have been or still are farmer extensionists. Gabino Lopez has been
active in the campesino-a-campesino movement for many years. He describes
what has been learned in Latin America from a village farmer and extensionist's
point of view since the publication of Two Ears of Corn by Roland Bunch
thirteen years ago. His paper defines and analyses the role of agronomists
and village extensionists in farmer-to-farmer extension systems. It describes
different types of village extensionist and reviews selection and training
procedures, as well as the thorny issue of remuneration. Pedro Baile,
a farmer-extensionist in the Upland Farm Management Project supported
by IIRR in the Philippines, describes his experiences, activities, achievements
and difficulties at different stages in becoming a farmer-extensionist.
He explains the main roles of three levels of farmer extensionists and
describes the strategies and approaches successfully implemented in the
project in which he works, as well as some of those that failed.
The four papers in this group all describe projects in
which the main objective has been or has become the support of farmers'
own research. The division between this and the first group of papers
is somewhat arbitrary, but the degree of emphasis on farmers' own extension
and farmers' own research differs. The most established, widely adopted
and well-known support activities are the FAO integrated pest management
(IPM) programmes centred around farmer field schools in South East Asia.
One such programme, and a similar one supported by an NGO, are described
in these papers. The third paper describes a programme in Bangladesh which
adopted some of the principles of the FAO IPM programmes. The fourth paper
describes a project in Zimbabwe which supports farmer research of a different
nature and is based on different principles.
Dilts and Hate describe the rationale behind and development
of the FAO-supported IPM farmer field schools in Indonesia. The approach
was developed in response to the high degree of locational specificity
in the ecology of tropical rice, which had prevented earlier 'blanket
recommendations' for IPM from being adopted. The authors describe the
basis of the farmer field schools as facilitating farmers to do research
in their own fields and to use the results from this for the management
of their farms. In this instance, government extension workers facilitate
the farmers' research. In other cases NGO employees are the facilitators.
Dilts and Hate suggest that the distinguishing features of the FAO-supported
field school programmes include: self- generated materials from the farmers'
own rice fields through experimental activities; the facilitating role
of the government extensionists; training which covers a whole crop season;
the deliberate effort to build farmers' organisations around IPM activities
and horizontal communication between farmers. Government extensionists
involved in these field schools are provided with intensive training in
various subjects, including inter-personal skills, and they are also required
to cultivate a rice crop for one season before beginning field school
facilitation. The authors see the whole process as one through which the
experts become farmers and farmers become the experts.
Mary Ann Kingsley and Paul Musante describe a project supported
by World Education (WE) which derives to some extent from the FAO model
of IPM farmer field schools. The WE project aims to assist farmers to
develop critical ecological decision-making and leadership skills that
increase the productivity of their farms. It does this by supporting group
learning processes via IPM field schools and linking school groups together
in local networks. IPM farmer field schools, cross-visits and meetings
between farmers, collaborative links with researchers and the training
of farmer trainers are all discussed in the paper. The authors provide
evidence that these activities have led to a significant reduction in
pesticide use, stable or increased yields, farmer testing and development
of new IPM practices and the effective facilitation and diffusion of new
methods by farmer trainers. They draw out three major lessons from their
experiences:
Murwira, Vela, Bungu and Mapepa describe a food security
project supported by the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG)
in Chivi, Zimbabwe. The aim of the project, which was initiated in 1990/91,
was to facilitate the community to realise its potential in identifying
and managing its own development. This included making better use of public
services and influencing other external inputs to ensure that they complemented
the community's own activities. The strategy was to unlock the potential
of the community to help itself and link it with sources of training and
technical expertise. The authors describe how, without providing any physical
inputs or credit, the project facilitated existing farmers' clubs and
garden groups in prioritising their needs and in meeting them. For example,
with respect to the farmers' problems with access to water, the project
The community then selected the water conservation techniques
they wanted to test, monitored the progress of these tests and either
rejected the techniques or modified them to suit their needs. Similar
processes were followed with other prioritised needs and in other communities.
The authors argue that the key to sustainability is that
Aside from farmer-to-farmer extension and facilitating
farmer research, the workshop papers also included descriptions of a number
of less well-known means of attempting to ensure that agricultural services
are responsive to farmers' needs. A selection of these has been included
in this final set of papers to illustrate their diversity.
Tne increasingly common way in which public sector service
providers are attempting to become more responsive is through collaboration
with NGOs. Three of the papers here describe such attempts at collaboration
from an NGO perspective. Ishii-Eiteman and Kaophong describe a Save the
Children Fund (SCF) project aimed at establishing institutional partnering
between GOs and NGOs in integrated pest management (IPM) strategies in
the Greater Mekhong sub- region of Thailand. An Inter-Agency IPM Working
Group was established which designed and implemented a season-long field-based
training programme for farmers and NGOs in ecological pest management.
The training initially emphasised farmer leadership in curriculum development,
thus ensuring relevance and active participation. However, the content
quickly expanded to address farmers' wider concerns. The authors argue
that 'organised flexibility' was critical to enable the training to respond
to farmers' current concerns. Following a participatory evaluation, the
second phase of the project entails closer monitoring of institutional
interactions; refining the methodology of participatory learning and developing
institutional strategies for extending and sustaining the process of inter-agency
collaboration.
Christie Peacock describes a dairy goat project that FARM
Africa has been supporting in the highlands of Ethiopia for the last seven
years. Although NGO/GO collaboration is not the main thrust of this project,
FARM Africa decided to work with the government extension system to maximise
its coverage. The project works with women from 1,400 of the poorest families
to improve their nutritional status by providing local goats on credit
to 'goat groups', together with training in improved goat husbandry. Government
extension staff are also provided with training, both on the job and at
six monthly sessions. They are trained to use a simple, participatory,
constantly-adjusted extension package and also to be sensitive to the
possibility of different needs in working with women. The author describes
the successful aspects of the project but, like Kamp (see Network Paper
59b), she poses the question of whether such intensive efforts can be
implemented on a larger scale. She suggests not, but hints at the potential
of farmer-to-farmer extension in this and stresses the need for NGOs to
work with marginal communities, which she sees as the most threatened
by the rationalisation of public sector extension programmes.
Nguyen Kim Hai describes an example of an NGO facilitating
a public sector extension system in Vietnam to become more responsive
to poor farmers' needs. International Cooperation for Development and
Solidarity (CIDSE) has been assisting the re-orientation of public extension
services in Bac Thai province since 1991. Its support began as a one-year
project in which over 100 district and provincial public sector staff
from the agricultural, forestry and irrigation sectors were 'guided' in:
identifying farmers' technical needs through working with villagers; planning
with farmers and setting up farmer interest groups; setting up demonstration
plots with farmers; providing technical guidance based around demonstration
plots and group meetings, and evaluating plot results and project activities
with the farmers. In 1992, a follow-up two-year extension programme was
initiated as a collaborative undertaking between the NGO and the government
agriculture and forestry departments. This effectively led to an expansion
and institutionalisation of the participatory practices developed in the
pilot project. It aimed to develop a farmer-based extension system through
using farmer representation on the programme steering committee, further
training and the adoption of a nine step participatory work plan for extension
officers. The author describes how the approach evolved during implementation
and how the big switch in practice came through requiring that plans for
demonstration plots had to come from farmer interest groups. This shift
highlighted the inability of extension staff to respond to such plans
and hence work on how they could become more responsive.
Two of the papers in this group describe how participatory
problem census/problem solving techniques are being used to facilitate
the reorientation of public sector agricultural extension systems. Bimoli
and Manandhar describe a pilot project in Nepal which has used these techniques.
Perceived inadequacies of the Training and Visit (T&V) extension system
led to the development of an approach based around groups of farmers and
involving 'farmer-centred' problem census and problem-solving (PCPS) techniques.
The authors describe in detail how the PCPS techniques are actually implemented
by public sector extension officers and argue that the approach: allows
the training needs of both farmers and extension staff to be identified
clearly; stimulates closer cooperation between government departments
in response to farmers' demands, and provides a focus for savings by farmer
groups. They also describe some of the problems that the approach continues
to face, including the need to: train more extension officers in the techniques;
find means of tackling the problems that farmers identify which are beyond
the mandate of the extension department; prevent other programmes from
undermining the self-help approach, and develop a system for monitoring
group activities.
Bhuiyan and Walker describe a similar project in which
PCPS techniques are being piloted in Jessore district in the south west
of Bangladesh. The Department of Agricultural Extension implemented this
pilot as part of its search for tools with which to increase the farmer
responsiveness and local planning of its activities. The authors argue
that 'coupled with an immediate input to local decision-making with the
Department, the system has so far proven positive'. They also highlight
some of the weaknesses of the pilot and draw out some lessons from the
experience.
Farouk and Worsley describe a horticultural extension project
which CARE has been supporting in Upper Egypt since 1990. The Farmlink
project aims to connect small-scale farmers with the wide range of agricultural
information resources in the country. The paper describes in detail the
steps through which CARE agricultural extension officers and farmers go
in order to: identify the farmers' needs; select farmer group representatives
and forge meetings between these representatives and agricultural researchers
or other experts to review technology options. Following such meetings,
farmer representatives select one or more technologies to test. They may
then promote such technologies among other farmers in their communities.
CARE facilitates the linking, testing and promotion processes. After five
years, the project has facilitated direct access to new technologies for
1,570 farmers (each of whom has, on average, passed information on to
three other farmers), covering 24 crops and involving 554 sources of information.
The authors argue that the success of this project stems from farmers
being facilitated to identify their own needs and from demonstrating that
the information that farmers need is available. However, once again, the
problem of scaling-up such efforts is raised by the authors.
Nar Bikram Thapa describes Action Aid's support of the
development of a cadre of Community Agriculture Workers (CAWs) who provide
extension services to farmers in return for payment in Sindhupalchowk
district in Nepal. This project is based on similar principles to some
of those through which attempts are being made to develop private extension
elsewhere. Thapa describes the CAW programme's activities and presents
the results of a study of its impact, which includes an analysis of farmers'
opinions of the CAWs' services. He concludes by arguing that the extension
system is cost-effective, sustainable, easily accessible to farmers and,
since it originates in and is managed by the community, is responsive
and accountable. He also suggests that the approach could be replicated,
with some modifications, in other parts of Nepal. Some of the problems
these self-employed extensionists face in developing their enterprises
are also described.
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Edited by Vanessa Scarborough
The workshop's 75 participants came from a wide range of professional backgrounds.
They included: farmers and farmer extensionists; community representatives/workers;
NGO representatives involved in supporting farmer-led extension and/or research;
public sector representatives some of whom were involved in reorienting
extension and research services towards more responsive modes of operation
and others who were interested to learn more about the farmer-led approaches
being supported by other organisations; donor representatives and academics.
The formal objectives of the workshop were:
Network Paper 59a: GROUP 1, FARMER-TO-FARMER EXTENSION
The author provides an indication of the effectiveness of adopting these
principles and identifies the factors needed to ensure the farmer-to-farmer
approach to appropriate technology generation and dissemination is sustainable.
He also reviews variations within the basic farmer- to-farmer framework
and describes some lessons learnt by those who have been engaged in it.
The author details the findings of a study of the impact of this approach
in one of the districts in which NAF provides support to a grassroots NGO.
The impact study relied heavily on farmers' views of the programme and thus
farmers' preferences in this area regarding different strategies for extension
are elucidated.
Network Paper 59b: GROUP 2, FARMER RESEARCH
Kevin Kamp describes a project which involved 50 rural women in north-west
Bangladesh in testing the feasibility of farming fish in small, nylon net
cages. The project was facilitated by CARE, in collaboration with an ODA
supported government extension programme. The fish culturing project began
when a woman approached CARE for support and guidance. In the initial stages
of the trials that were subsequently established, the women involved followed
the advice of CARE and government staff. However, the women soon knew more
than the staff about cage culture and began doing their own experiments.
CARE examined this learning process and the author argues that, although
the initial training provided by government extension staff was important,
the women subsequently learnt more from their own and their neighbours'
experiments. The suggestions that the author draws out from this experience
to guide other extension systems are:
The author also highlights some of the disadvantages of such an approach
to technology generation and dissemination; it is very staff intensive and
therefore expensive.
`began by investigating traditional or local practices in
soil and water conservation. The advantages and disadvantages of each
technique were examined by IT staff and the farmers together. Both farmer
and gardener representatives were exposed to other techniques which were
in use in similar geographical areas.'
`... the project merely acts as a facilitation, stimulating
a process of community development ... there is no heavy investment in
project specific institutions, personnel or activities.'
The ITDG project in Chivi was also discussed in the case study paper on
the Zimbabwe Farmers' Union which was included in the July 1995 mailing
from the Agricultural Research and Extension Network.
Network Paper 59c: GROUP 3, OTHER FARMER-RESPONSIVE
METHODS OF EXTENSION AND/OR RESEARCH
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