Figure 1 shows the proposed framework for guiding scaling up of natural resource management (NRM) research. It links chronologically key elements which strengthen the likelihood of successful scaling-up. In general, we advocate that scaling up be considered during the early stages of planning research activities. Table 1 gives a breakdown of key activities at each project stage and provides a set of attributes to be achieved (or aspired to) in the scaling up process.

The strategic elements, while essentially recommended at the pre-project preparation phase, also have a bearing throughout the project and program phases. The elements can be used at different entry points in a research implementation process: reviewing ongoing work, as well as assessing finished research projects with existing potentially useful outputs. The framework may also serve as additional material in evaluations of research programs.

Many of the elements have parallels with any good project design, but are particularly important to emphasize here, as in the past, much of the research project was focused on traditional research outputs.

Figure 1 gives an idea of how the different elements, discussed in more detail below, are important for several, if not all, the project phases.

Figure 1. Key Strategies for Scaling Up NRM Research in Relation to Design Process

Reference

Guendel, S., J. Hancock and S. Anderson. 2001. Scaling Up Strategies for Research in Natural Resources Management: A Comparative Review. Chatham, UK: Natural Resources Institute.

Contributed by:
Sabine Guendel, Jim Hancock
and Simon Anderson
Email: Sguendel@aol.com

47
Contending Cultures Among Development Actors

In participatory research and development, culture, organizational and personal behaviors, power and politics, all coalesce.

Lewis et al (2003) establish a cogent argument which suggests that serious analysis of the culture of aid organizations, and of the relationships with other actors, matters, and that it is a neglected area of analysis. Their discussion raises important new questions about the development enterprise from an internal perspective that heretofore has been neglected or ignored. Contrasting the article by Lewis et al. with a book by Harrison and Huntington (2000) reinforces that conviction. Throughout the Harrison and Huntington book--whose authors provide an excellent overview of the history of the study of culture as something that certainly does 'matter' in development--we kept saying to ourselves that 'All this is fine, but it is focussed (as is much of the ancillary literature on 'culture' in development) on looking outward, at others undergoing development, without consideration of the development agency actors themselves. It mostly addresses questions and issues concerning the question: Why some political and national systems succeed and others fail.

What is missing in the bulk of the literature, we said to ourselves, is turning the lens around look inward at what Lewis et al (2003), Eyben (2003b) and others call the 'black box' at the heart of the donor agencies, government bureaucracies, the development firms, the non-government organizations (NGOs), and the development contractors and consultants.

What is missing is examining the world views (cultures) of the agencies, organizations and personalities that are mandated with 'doing' international research and development aid planning and implementation. In short, we need now to look at our own institutions, those doing 'development', with assisting other cultures, or nations, to succeed, progress and develop. We who work in development need to examine more critically our institutions and organizations, and our own behaviors, reflexively and introspectively.

To some extent the top has now been taken off the Pandora's box of aid agency and development research institution cultures ('cultures' plural: there is no single mode), and it is unlikely to be ever put back on again. We are, indeed, beginning to look inward, at the cultures of our own organizations (speaking as individuals who have worked a lifetime for various development aid agencies, contract firms, research centers and NGOs).

In the past and still continuing in the present, for example, it was common to pursue research and development from an aid agency and institution-centric points of view, performing and perfecting practices ostensibly 'for them', the 'beneficiaries' of aid, in terms of new problem-solving technologies such as the 'Green Revolution' and pursuing and promoting such contemporary aid concepts as 'empowerment', 'transparency', 'poverty reduction', 'participation', 'social inclusion' and the like. That approach puts value upon coming up with 'new and better' methods of development from our point of view looking outward, of 'getting it right' with new and better constructs for others to adapt, without fully appreciating the origins, implementation and expressions of those approaches as part of our cultural baggage. That structural model, in short, stresses ways of doing things to and for the under-developed, with comparatively less examination of the ways in which we (the developed 'experts') can work with 'the beneficiaries' to facilitate already established and evolving innovation systems of their own. We need now to look inward to examine the impacts of our own internally established world views, cultures and personal behaviors as the outside agents of aid.

Hereafter, by the mere recognition of the internal issues arising, we find ourselves on the cusp of a new and changing paradigm, one that is being led by serious and in-depth anthropological thinking. For many development practitioners, academics and researchers the transition is, or will be (as they get on with it), difficult. This is because we are often trained in cultures of codification, problem-solving and scientific methodology that do not allow much space (if any) for anthropological concepts and qualitative measures or analysis. On other occasions we have colluded by suggesting 'ideal' and 'visionary' ways forward, with little consideration of cultural and methodological issues, whether about ourselves or about those with (or for) whom we work.

There are strong pressures for some of the new insights and their implications for development practice to be co-opted and appropriated by members of the old paradigm (such as stuffing 'participation' rhetoric into the traditional pipelines of aid). However, we feel this is unlikely to happen this time round, partly as it is members of the anthropology profession who are now taking us into these new areas, both in practice (working within the donor agencies and organizations of development) and in the process of developing new theories and practical applications. These are not 'new professionals' working in special projects; rather, these are long-term professionals working within their discipline, bringing about change from within both the discipline and the development organizations in which they work. Ultimately, these internal revelations will (we hope) serve to help not only to improve our practice, but also help reduce poverty and social exclusion in its many forms in the places in which we work.

Scientist Culture in Development Research: The Hard and the Soft of It

Two of the major policy objectives of an international group of scientific research centers are to ensure responsiveness to the needs of stakeholders and to remain pro-poor. Specific goals include focusing on poverty reduction, keeping research focused on major problems of global significance, and to ensure that research is demand-driven. Recent studies of success in living up to these goals describe how the culture of an organization defines and produces engagement between researchers and farmers, as a process. It also tells a great deal about the engagement between traditional technological researchers and social scientists promoting a more participatory research agenda. A closer examination of these relationships provides an important window of understanding on how such a relationship comes to be produced and maintained, or not, within a research center. The values, beliefs, attitudes and practices of the organization are an important element of the engagement process between researchers (organizational members, both technologists and social scientists) and their clients (poor farmers and other poor rural people in the developing world).

Within the last decade, the value of participatory research has become recognized as an important methodology to ensure that research is adaptive to the needs of the rural poor. Where there is support for the adoption of participatory social science approaches from donors, there tends to be good support and acceptance for such 'soft' methodologies by bio-physical scientists. Nonetheless, we must ask how the 'pro-poor' policy rhetoric and acceptance of 'soft' participatory approaches by bio-physical scientists plays out in an actual process of engagement with different staff of an organization. And, how has the participatory discourse become appropriated into a scientific and technological paradigm within an organization. This process is achieved as much by bio-physical scientists using participatory approaches for a functional end (efficiency in producing adoptable technologies) as it is by the compliance and "service role" of social scientists operating in the system.

In the past, an important strategy to bridge the gap between the functional and empowering categories was through 'experiential learning', a process in which social scientists working 'side by side' with bio-physical scientists is believed to lead to a process of mutual learning, thereby enhancing the nature and quality of engagement between the researchers and their constituents. Looking at it historically, it is interesting to see how social scientists have proceeded to define a strategy focused on a systems approach (and hence necessarily involving a process that includes working with multiple stakeholder constituents, participatory methodologies and multi-disciplinary teams). The implicit objective of this approach is to demonstrate the viability and effectiveness of social science and the participatory approach to biophysical colleagues not schooled in it.

Research centers have developed an impressive range of research projects ostensibly scaled up from single commodities or crop specializations to the management of natural resources, and from purely technocratic approaches to approaches which included participatory modes of engagement. Despite the apparent achievements in project design, however, there are limitations when they continue to focus on single crops or commodities rather than whole ecosystems, and as research results are produced without much input from the farmers or reference to other multidisciplinary colleagues. It appears therefore that researchers may adopt the terminology and goals of the changes in their research designs, but continue to act in the ways most familiar to them, in the cultural styles of traditional research. Their style often is to co-opt the language, but not the practice.

It has been found that addressing structural change alone has little chance of success unless accompanied by a shift in scientific cultures, particularly if resistance is embedded in the values, beliefs and attitudes of organizational members. Combined with these deeply-held views, the quality of personal relationships between bio-physical and social scientists (mistrust, power relations, access to donor funds) all play an important role in how views of participatory research and social science in general, are generated and maintained. Subsequently, these influence and determine how participatory approaches are employed in practice by technology generating scientists.

In an organizational paradigm that is dominated by practitioners of a 'linear and rational' science, the process of knowledge production can aptly be described by the metaphor of a 'pipeline'. Within such a system, the status and subsequent practice of social science is fraught with 'misgivings', affronts (both to one's personal sense of self-esteem and discipline) and a general 'dumbing down' to suit a functional and instrumental function to spread technologies that will 'alleviate poverty'. The relative isolation from end-users or farmers is rooted in the center's conventional wisdom, one that holds that scientists work most effectively when they are protected from 'political' pressures and are free to get on with the job of developing valuable technologies. Underlying this view is the assumption that 'new technology" is the key leading factor in the process of desired social change' (Anderson, Levy and Morrison, 1991). Finally, note the paradox here: that social analysis of the generation and diffusion of technology shows that it rarely follows the pipeline model.

An Appropriation of Cultural Language

The old days of seeing the problems and analyzing the cultures of development as being 'out there' somewhere are over. In the words on one aid agency leader: 'It is no longer about them as much as it is (now) about us.' That is, the onus is now 'in here', in the black box of aid agencies, research organizations and academic research institutions, for example, whose goals are to practice international research and development to alleviate poverty, encourage empowerment, support social inclusion, and the like. Whether language, methods, theories, etc., are co-opted, modified, fussed, or scaled-up, etc., depends on the culture of the project, the organization, or the program. And while co-option will surely continue and genuine change will likely continue to take place, the old "them-and-us" dichotomy is no longer meaningful as a way to speak and behave as we engage in the hard work of development. Pandora's Box is open, and it will be hard to close. Rosalind Eyben's studies (2003, 2004) and others that are coming into the literature reflect that at least some international development agencies and government bureaucracies are now showing a propensity to shift the focus of Clyde Kluckhohn's (1985) 'great mirror' to reflect inward, on agency actors and their behaviors, to seek the source of some of the internal organizational and cultural incompatibilities that undercut our best efforts at development.

Conclusions: Personal Choice

The move towards more transparency, more reflexive attitudes in the workplace, etc., brings us to focus on the importance of the choices we all make about what worldview and type of personal behaviors we wish to develop, and what types of workplace culture we choose to support by our actions.

References

Anderson, R.S., E. Levy and B.M. Morrison. 1991. Rice Science and Development Politics: Research Strategies and IRRI's Technologies Confront Asian Diversity, 1950-1980. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Biggs, S. and H. Matsaert. 2004. Strengthening Poverty Reduction Programmes Using An Actor Oriented Approach: Examples from Natural Resources Innovation Systems. AgREN Network Paper No. 134. London: Overseas Development Institute (www.odi.org.uk/).

Biggs, S. and S. Smith. 2003. Paradox of Learning in Project Cycle Management and the Role of Organizational Culture. World Development Vol. 31, No. 10. pp. 1743-1757.

Earl, S., F. Carden and T. Smutylo. 2001. Outcome Mapping: Building Learning and Reflection Into Development Programmes. Ottawa: IDRC.

Eyben, R. 2003. Donors as Political Actors: Fighting the Thirty Years War in Bolivia, Brighton, Sussex, UK: Institute for Development Studies.

Eyben, R. 2004. Relationships Matter for Supporting Change in Favour of Poor People. Lessons for Change in Policy and Organisations. No. 8. Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies.

Grimble, R. and K. Wellard. 1997. Stakeholder Methodologies in Natural Resource Management: A Review of Principles, Contexts, Experiences and Opportunities. Agricultural Systems, 55(2): 173-193.

Gurung, B. and H. Menter. 2004. Mainstreaming Gender-Sensitive Participatory Approaches: The CIAT Case Study. In: Pachico, D. (ed). Scaling Up and Out: Achieving Widespread Impact Through Agricultural Research, Cali, Columbia: Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT).

Hammond, S. A. and C. Royal (eds). 1998. Lessons from the Field: Applying Appreciative Enquiry. Practical Press, Inc., P.O. Box 260608, Plano TX, USA.

Harrison, L.E. and S.P. Huntington (eds). 2000. Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. New York: Basic Books.

Hawkins, P. 1997. Organisational Culture: Sailing Between Evangelism and Complexity. Human Relations 50 (4): 417-440.

Kluckhohn, C. 1985 (1949). Mirror for Man: The Relation of Anthropology to Modern Life, 2nd edition. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

Lewis, D. et al. 2003. Practice, Power and Meaning: Frameworks for Studying Organisational Culture in Multi-Agency Rural Development Projects. Journal of International Development, 15: 541-557.

Mosse, D. 2003. Good Policy is Unimplementable? Reflections on the Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice. A paper prepared for presentation at the workshop 'Order and Disjuncture: The Organisation of Aid and Development', 26-27 September 2003, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London (www.soas.ac.uk/departments/departmentinfo.cfm?navid=459 ).

Richards, M., J. Davies and G. Yaron. 2003. Stakeholder Incentives in Participatory Forest Management: A Manual for Economic Analysis, London: ITDG Publishing.

Spradley, J.P. and D.W. McCurdy. 1980. Anthropology: The Cultural Perspective, 2nd edition, New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Watkins, J. M. and B. J. Mohr. 2001. Appreciative Inquiry, Change at the Speed of Imagination. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pefeiffer.

Contributed by:
Stephen Biggs, Don Messerschmidt
and Barun Gurung
Email: s.biggs@wlink.com.np ;
dmesserschmidt@gmail.com ;
b.gurung@cgiar.org

48
Organizational Implications for Mainstreaming Participatory Research and Gender Analysis

The effectiveness of Participatory Research and Gender Analysis (PR&GA) approaches is critically constrained by an organizational structure based on a supply-driven system of innovation. Results of several studies conducted by the Program with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centers demonstrates three separate but inter-related constraints:

1) Fragmented investment in and application of PR&GA approaches across the CGIAR system leads to repeated testing of proven approaches and as a result of which international agricultural research centers (IARCs) do not evolve beyond a researcher-led type of participation.

2) In a researcher-driven participatory research process, the likelihood of technologies matching farmers' priorities is small because end-users, such as women, tend to be brought into the participatory research process at a relatively late stage, to evaluate technologies that have already been developed and are ready for dissemination.

3) Even in those cases where innovations have resulted from farmers' feedback, it is unlikely that such learning and change can be sustained beyond the life of the project. One major reason for this is that PR&GA approaches largely remain isolated from, and often contradict the dominant paradigm of innovation practiced within organizations.

While there is a need for increased focus on capacity development to enhance skills in conducting PR&GA, such capacity development processes need to be combined with transformations in the structure and culture of the organization to create an enabling organizational environment for participatory approaches to become an integral part of its functioning.

Three Dimensions of the Organization

The organizational framework that informs this analysis consists of three separate but inter-related dimensions.

1) The Technical Dimension is the visible and tangible components of an organization and can be accessed through printed publications, policy statements, public relation manuals and the like. This is the public face of the organization and it consists of three discrete elements: the policy or mandate, the tasks and responsibilities, and the human resources or expertise of an organization.

2) The Political Dimension of an organization is less tangible and is also referred to as the socio-political dimension. This dimension represents those aspects of an organization that are more 'hidden' from both public scrutiny as well as some internal members. The 'hidden' nature of this dimension suggests that it is a more 'fuzzy' and subjective arena in which decisions are made, policies are formulated, and individual members negotiate 'spaces' in which to maneuvre and innovate.

3) The Cultural Dimension is the non-tangible aspect of an organization. This represents those often unquestioned but embedded organizational elements that influence the norms and values underlying the running of the organization; the way work relations between staff and outsiders are organized; and the way members feel and think about their work environment and about other members. This dimension is comprised of three elements: organizational symbols, cooperation and attitudes.

Taken together, the three dimensions and the nine elements are contained in a framework, where they cannot be viewed as separate and distinct aspects of an organization but rather, as an axis of meaning that runs across and down the elements.

Based on a major study at CIAT (2002), the following issues emerged as critical to conducting participatory research.

Technical Dimension

Political Dimension

Cultural Dimension

Looking Ahead

In summary, the lessons that emerge from this case study are:

Recommendations

To ensure consistency in the use of approaches and maintain quality of participation, the following organizational structures need to be in place:

Such changes in organizational processes need to be complemented and accompanied by larger initiatives that focus on the following:

References

Gauchan, D., M. Joshi and S. Biggs. 2000. A Strategy for Strengthening Participatory Technology Development in Agricultural and Natural Resources Innovations Systems. The Case of Nepal. Paper presented at the workshop on "Strategy for Enhancing NARC Participatory Technology Development and Linkages", Nepal Agricultural Research Council, Lalitpur. May 30-31.

Groverman, V. and J. D. Gurung. 2001. Gender and Organizational Change: A Training Manual. International Center for Integrated Mountain Development. Kathmandu, Nepal.

Johnson, N., N. Lilja and J.A. Ashby. 2000. Using Participatory Research and Gender Analysis in Natural Resource Management Research: A Preliminary Analysis of the PRGA Inventory. PRGA Working Document 10. CIAT, Cali.

Tichy, N.M. 1982. Managing Change Strategically: The Technical, Political and Cultural Keys, Organizational Dynamics, Autumn.

Contributed by:
Barun Gurung
Email: b.gurung@cgiar.org

49
From Piloting to Scaling Up PR&D: Enabling Nepal Farmers to Grow a Healthy Potato Crop

Participatory research and development (PR&D) often begins with a pilot activity that involves a small number of participants within a limited geographic area. No matter how successful, these pilot activities inevitably face the challenge of scaling up successful PR&D experiences beyond the pioneering farmer groups and farming communities.

This paper describes a PR&D experience in Nepal which involved: a) a pilot project in two hill communities for collectively managing a potato disease; and b) a subsequent scaling-up phase for enabling farmers – across diverse agroecological and socio-economic environments in the country – to grow a healthy potato crop. In moving from piloting to scaling up, this case project highlights key PR&D challenges — in responding to expanding needs and problems, introducing relevant agricultural innovations, adapting participatory methods to facilitate learning and action, and in setting up an enabling institutional and policy environment.

The Context

Potato plays an important role in the livelihood and food security of farming communities in Nepal, a country considered one of the world's most underdeveloped. As the fourth most important food crop in the country, potato cultivation extends from the southern plains to the remote northern mountains. Per capita consumption of potato in Nepal is one of the highest in southwest Asia. It is the most important staple food especially in the mid-and high-hill areas.

While the crop makes a significant contribution to national agricultural development, Nepal lags behind other countries in terms of potato productivity. It has one of the lowest national yield averages globally and for the developing world. Diseases are a major limiting factor in improving potato productivity in the country. Late blight and bacterial wilt appear in epidemic proportions, and it is not uncommon for farmers to lose their entire potato field to these diseases.

Use of low-quality seed, prohibitive cost of chemical control measures, and poor crop management practices are among the key factors contributing to the widespread occurrence of disease problems. In addition, potato farmers are barely reached by formal research and extension services. Government agencies are constrained by limited resources and capacities to respond to problems faced by potato farmers in far-flung areas.

Piloting Action Research: Community Management of Bacterial Wilt Disease

The Lumle Agricultural Research Center (LARC) is a regional research center dealing with key agricultural issues in western Nepal. One of LARC's program priorities is to undertake research and outreach activities for hill farmers. While potato is a traditional staple food in this hill communities, crop production is constrained by limited access to land and other resources, as well as by the less favorable agroclimatic conditions.

Problem Identification and Prioritization

During the 1980s, LARC conducted several diagnostic and assessment activities with potato farmers in the western hills. Based on informal reports from farmers about serious crop losses, LARC researchers conducted technical assessment of crop production constraints, ranging from soil analysis to disease monitoring. Through a group trek method, locally called samuhik bhraman, researchers and farmers also conducted joint field inspections. The preliminary observations were then discussed in community meetings, during which courses of actions were identified and agreed upon.

Results of participatory diagnosis and assessment identified bacterial wilt as the single most important problem facing potato farmers. From the late 1980s to early 1990s, reduction in farm yield due to bacterial wilt was documented to increase from 10% to over 90%. Its occurrence was mainly associated with the use of infected seed, along with planting on contaminated soil and poor crop management practices.

Introducing a Socio-Technical Innovation

In 1993, LARC and UPWARD launched a research project to introduce an effective way for local potato farmers to manage bacterial wilt. Previous research by CIP, LARC and other research organizations had already developed technology components anchored on seed and soil health. Drawing on these available research outputs, the project team formulated an integrated disease management (IDM) strategy that included the following technology components: 1) elimination of infected planting materials from program villages; 2) three-year crop rotation to temporarily substitute potato with non-host crops; 3) multiplication and use of clean seed; and 4) rouging and field sanitation (Pradhanang et al., 1994).

However, in seeking to implement the IDM strategy, it became clear to the project team that the proposed technical solutions were not adequate to effectively manage the disease problem. There were crucial socio-cultural and economic factors that hindered implementation of the technology components. Implementing a three-year ban on potato cultivation required potato-growing households to balance short-term food needs with long-term benefits of crop health. Enforcing measures to control the diffusion of infected seed implied restricting the use of seed potato as a cultural symbol in traditional rituals (e.g., as wedding gifts) and the crop's utilization in local livelihoods (e.g., serving potato dishes in restaurants and hotels catering to the tourism business). Most importantly, carrying out the full IDM strategy required full community participation since non-compliance by even one farmer would create opportunities for the pathogen to persist and spread in the community.

Two pilot villages were selected in the western mid-hills of Nepal, with altitudes of 2100 masl and 1800 masl, respectively. Through a series of community meetings and with the guidance of the project team, local farmers identified the social measures that need to accompany the technical components of the IDM strategy (Table 1). To oversee implementation of the agreed IDM strategy, a village-level committee was formed, consisting of at least 10 members elected by farmers themselves. One of the key functions of the committee was to promote incentives for participation (e.g., introducing alternative food crops during the three-year moratorium on potato cultivation) and enforcing sanctions for non-compliance with the jointly agreed IDM strategy (e.g., imposing fines on farmers found to have planted potato during the three-year ban, and uprooting potato plants in the field).

Impact Evaluation

Project implementation was sustained in one village during the three-year period. All of the 51 farming households in the village fully complied with the technical and social requirements for IDM, while the committee effectively functioned as a facilitation and monitoring unit. In contrast, operationalization of the IDM strategy was prematurely terminated in the second village after the committee disbanded within a year of launching the project. Among the key reasons were: farmers' perception on the committee's lack of formal authority to assume "police" powers, the resignation of key committee members due to emerging conflicts with farmers in the latter's performance of their assigned tasks, and the inability of individual farmers to cope with pressures to meet immediate food and livelihood needs of their own households. A risk group soon emerged in the community, consisting of farmers who chose not to comply with the technical measures for disease management while refusing to accept the sanctions that were supposed to be meted on them.

The contrasting experiences in the two villages unwittingly provided the project with an opportunity to compare outcomes between one community that successfully carried out collective management of the disease and another community where the approach failed. Evaluation carried out after the three-year period of IDM implementation revealed opposite outcomes. Field inspection in the first village showed that bacterial wilt was completely eliminated. On the other hand, bacterial wilt continued to be a problem in the second village where 75% disease incidence was observed in the potato fields of local farmers.

Scaling Up the Innovation for Bacterial Wilt Management

Moving Beyond the Pilot Communities

Following positive outcomes of the community-mobilization approach, a follow-up project was launched in 1998 that aimed to implement IDM in other key potato-growing areas across Nepal. With funding support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), CIP-UPWARD teamed up with the Department of Agriculture (DoA) through its Potato Development Section (PDS). The DoA was seen as the appropriate lead organization for the scaling up efforts given its national mandate agricultural extension and its existing network of district agricultural development offices (DADOs). In planning to scale up the innovation for community management of bacterial wilt disease, the project team realized the following:

1. The innovation cannot exclusively focus on bacterial wilt because farmers in potato-growing areas simultaneously face several disease constraints. Besides bacterial wilt, the other major diseases were late blight, wart, black scurf and common scab.

2. In many cases, bacterial wilt is not the key disease constraint. And often, these involve a broader set of problems that include diseases, seed supply and quality, and general crop management.

3. To reach more farmers more quickly, a more extensive approach needs to employed for facilitating group learning to help farmers manage location-specific constraints to growing a healthy potato crop.

The IDM innovation subsequently evolved toward integrated crop management (ICM) of potato through participatory group training based on farmer field school (FFS) approach.

Drawing from principles in adult education, the FFS is a season-long training process that farmers undergo through the facilitation of extensionists and researchers. The farmer field school (FFS) approach involves a group of farmers participating in a series of sessions for experiential learning and experimentation based on a curriculum jointly developed by farmers and researchers/extensionists.

Scaling Up Through FFS-Potato ICM

FFS was first developed in the late 1980s for rice integrated pest management (IPM) by the Indonesian IPM Program, supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This pioneering work formed the basis for an UPWARD-supported project in sweetpotato integrated crop management (ICM) in Indonesia, whose experiences in turn were a major input in CIP's efforts to adapt the FFS approach for potato IDM in Nepal.

While the lack of any previous experience in potato FFS was a major bottleneck, the project nevertheless benefited from an earlier FAO program in Nepal focusing on rice integrated pest management (IPM). Following its first-year implementation in 1999-2000, the project sought major adaptations of the FFS approach, as developed for rice IPM in Nepal, to suit the potato crop and the constraints being addressed (Table 2).

Because there was a wide variability in potato systems and constraints among the nine FFS sites, each group of facilitators and farmers developed its own locally-relevant training curriculum. Thus, although they had a common focus on seed health and late blight, each FFS took the decision of including bacterial wilt, true potato seed, and/or crop management.

Institutionalization and Policy Support

The FFS learning plots were also intended to serve as vehicles for multiplying healthy tuber seed potato that could be distributed to local farmers at the end of the FFS. As participants pointed out, knowledge gained from FFS would have little value to them unless they have access to good-quality seed that is an essential input to the practice of potato IDM in their respective farms. The project realized, equally important in potato IDM is setting up local social and institutional arrangements for ensuring a more equitable access and sharing of good-quality seed produced through the FFS.

At the national level, the project realized that sustaining FFS-potato ICM requires longer-term funding commitment from the government. While extension workers have been keen in implementing FFS activities, they need funding support to travel to remote potato farming communities and to secure clean seed and other training materials. On the other hand, government funds can only be accessed if there is an officially approved allocation from the annual government budget for agricultural extension.

Impact Evaluation

The project conducted a two-part evaluation to compare outcomes among three groups of farmers: a) FFS participants; b) other farmers who had contact with FFS participants; c) other farmers who had no contact with FFS participants.

An initial impact evaluation was conducted in 2003 primarily to assess changes in knowledge and practice. Over 80% of FFS participants correctly answered a knowledge test item on judicious use of chemicals, and likewise adopted the practice of using healthy seed. The evaluation also revealed diffusion of innovation, whereby an FFS participant shared information on potato ICM to an average of 18 other farmers.

A follow-up impact evaluation was conducted in 2004, which sought to assess longer-term outcomes particularly socio-economic benefits of FFS-potato ICM to farming households. Similar to the initial evaluation, findings indicated that use of clean seed was the most common ICM practice adopted by farmers two years after the FFS. The evaluation also noted farmers' increased reliance on good-quality seed that was multiplied and maintained on-farm. Economic analysis showed that gross and net returns to land and labor significantly increased in post training as compared to the pre-training.

Formative Lessons from the Experience

The project experience in piloting and scaling up innovation for improved potato production highlighted the following key lessons:

1. PR&D enables research and extension workers to finetune technological innovations according to the local agro-ecological and socio-economic setting. This was illustrated in the pilot project to mobilize communities for managing bacterial wilt disease.

2. Agricultural innovations successfully introduced in pilot projects cannot be expected to have the same level of outcomes and degree of relevance when scaled up beyond the pioneering farmers and farming communities. Variability in needs, opportunities and conditions require that these innovations need continuous adaptation when introduced to other communities. In this case, the initial focus on bacterial wilt was later expanded to cover other disease and crop management practices.

3. Scaling up requires a careful re-examination of agricultural innovations not only in terms of the learning content but also of the means for dissemination and sharing. The community mobilization approach was key to developing and introducing an integrated socio-technical innovation. However, scaling up the innovation required other learning mechanisms to enhance reach to more farmers and their communities.

References

Campilan, D. 2002. Linking Social and Technical Components of Innovation Through Social Learning: The Case of Potato Disease Management in Nepal. In: Leeuwis, C. and R. Pyburn (eds). Wheelbarrows Full of Frogs, Social Learning in Rural Resource Management. International Research and Reflections Series. WUR, Wageningen, The Netherlands. 135-146.

Dhital, B.K., A. Vhaidya, R.R. Pandey and P.M. Pradhanang. 1996. Integrated Management of Bacterial Wilt Through Community Approach: Lessons from the Hills of Nepal. In: CIP-UPWARD. Into Action Research, Partnerships in Asian Rootcrop Research and Development, Los Banos, Laguna, Philippines. pp43-58.

Ghimere, S.R. and B.K. Dhital. 1998. Community Approach to the Management of Bacterial Wilt of Potato in the Hills of Nepal: A Project Terminal Report. Occasional Paper No. 98/1. LARC, Lumle, Nepal.

Hidalgo, O., D. Campilan and T. Lama. 2001. Strengthening Farmer Capacity to Grow a Healthy Potato Crop in Nepal. In: Scientist and Farmer, Partners in Research for the 21st Century. 1999-2000. CIP Program Report. Lima, Peru. pp336-342.

Pitamber, R.C. and K.P. Pant. 2004. Field-level Outcomes of Potato Integrated Disease Management Through Farmer Field School Approach in Nepal: A Project Evaluation Report. CIP-UPWARD, Los Banos, Laguna, Philippines.

Pradhanang, P.M. and J.G. Elphingstone (eds.). 1997. Integrated Management of Bacterial Wilt of Potato: Lessons from the Hills of Nepal. LARC, Lumle, Nepal.

Contributed by:
Dindo Campilan
Email: d.campilan@cgiar.org

50
Institutionalizing Participatory Technology Development

In the last decade, a growing number of organizations have approached agricultural research and extension in ways that involve farmers as equal partners in all stages of the development process. These groups have also focused on strengthening the capacities of farmers and rural communities to experiment and innovate.

It has been recognized that these interactive approaches, often referred to by the umbrella term Participatory Technology Development (PTD) (van Veldhuizen et al., 1997), are necessary in order to improve agriculture and natural resource management, especially in the less well-endowed rural areas (Röling, 1996). Recently, some promising efforts have been made to institutionalize PTD within large organizations of agricultural research, extension and education/training-both government and non-government organizations (NGOs).

This paper compares and analyzes some experiences in different countries in institutionalizing PTD, based on a study initiated by the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) in the Philippines and ETC Ecoculture in the Netherlands. Nineteen organizations took part in the study as well as in the subsequent one-week workshop on the topic.

The concept of Farmer Participatory Research (FPR) originally referred to efforts of scientists to involve farmers in (part of) their research activities. The approach has gradually evolved into PTD, which gives a more central role to farmers and their organizations in defining research agendas and in planning and implementing the actual research, with the aim of increasing local research and development capacities.

Institutionalization: Basic Premises

The analysis during the workshop focused on the question already formulated by the first advocates of PTD, when its framework was developed in the late 1980s (Haverkort et al., 1988): how to sustain the PTD processes beyond short, often project-based interventions.

Institutionalization of PTD is understood as making PTD an integral part of the regular programs and activities of institutions of research, extension and education. The focus in this paper is on integrating PTD into formal research, while fully recognizing that this will not be the only activity that a good research institute will involve itself in. Conventional, on-station research will continue to be required, but hopefully inspired by and linked to an active PTD program to ensure relevance and applicability of the on-station work. Putting PTD in this perspective may help to overcome the resistance of many researchers to the approach.

However, if PTD is made compulsory for everybody, if this is backed up with a long list of formal rules, regulations and formats, bureaucracy will have prevailed and the spirit of PTD may disappear. Effective PTD needs understanding and motivation rather than commands, and needs to balance rules with freedom for creativity and room for maneuver. This implies finding a balance between standardization of steps, methods and techniques versus responsiveness of researchers to local and time-specific opportunities and needs. Instead of recommending a standard package for institutionalizing PTD, a set of basic elements that need to be part of (the training in) each PTD program was formulated:

General PTD Implementation Guidelines

Based on these basic premises, staff can be encouraged to plan their own field work (i.e., participatory planning within the organization), possibly weekly or monthly, to be supported and monitored by those responsible. The concept of institutionalization is closely linked to, yet distinctly different from, that of scaling out or scaling up, subjects of recent studies (IIRR, 2000; Guendel et al., 2001). The latter two refer to the wider notion of reaching more people more quickly, either through widening the geographic area and/or number of cases in which the approach is applied or through moving upwards to involve various levels in an organization. Scaling up is a necessary step towards institutionalization, but a project can manage to reach into several levels of an institution, yet still not ensure that work at these various levels continues after a project has ended (i.e., that PTD becomes part and parcel of the regular programs and activities).

Institutionalization refers to a process of change. The case studies revealed that the following four larger sets or groups of activities are often central to this process of change:

Institutional change processes can be complex, particularly in the case of research institutes which try to incorporate PTD into their regular operations. PTD is not just one of many different methods; it implies a fundamentally different way of working with farmers and other end-users and internally with colleagues, superiors and employees.

Tichy (1982), followed by authors such as Groverman and Gurung (2001), found that, in complex institutional change processes, one has to look at the mission/mandate of the institute, the structure and human resources. Moreover, institutional change has not only a technical-administrative dimension (the 'nuts and bolts'), but also includes political (power and decision making) and socio-cultural aspects (norms and values). The complexity of institutional change is summarized in Table 1.

The Research Organization: A Hard Nut to Crack?

Why is it so difficult for research organizations to accept and incorporate PTD? Or is it? The prevalent hierarchical management structure is part of the problem although this may be less so in the case of the international research institutes as compared to national research institutes. There is often a culture of individualism and specialization in which researchers develop very specific, narrow areas of interest. This makes it difficult to pay attention to the wider development perspective of their research and also to interact with researchers of other disciplines. Through their training and peer interaction, researchers come to look at their knowledge as superior relative to the knowledge of farmers and others. As funding is often assured (or at least used to be) through regular government channels, and the influence of other actors in research organizations is otherwise limited, research does not develop notions of accountability other than to immediate superiors and sources of funding.

At a more fundamental level, much of this is caused or reinforced by the prevailing view on what 'good' science is all about. Replicability of the research, the use of a limited range of statistical approaches, the acceptance of results by peers, for instance, through specialized journals, are more important notions than evidence of a need for the research, its direct, practical relevance and the spread and use of research results. Staff reward and incentive mechanisms further encourage researchers in this direction.

But there are also positive developments and opportunities for change within research organizations. In many countries, individual research centers are given increased freedom in planning and implementing research. At the same time, the centers are challenged to raise research funds from sources other than the regular government budget, making them potentially more open to the needs and interests of other actors. Compared to large government extension agencies, research institutes already have internal organizational flexibility. They certainly avail themselves of a potential of relatively well-educated staff capable of developing and implementing PTD, if given the opportunity. To meet the challenge of building research organizations capable of doing PTD, the opportunities provided by such positive developments should not be overlooked.

A Research Organization Capable of Doing PTD

Below is a summary of the key lessons derived from the workshop, grouped according to the aspects identified in Table 1. The importance of partnership as a vehicle for institutionalizing PTD is also discussed.

The Nuts and Bolts of the Organization

A research organization needs to define its role or 'niche' in PTD, include the PTD approach in research planning where applicable, and allocate resources accordingly. More specifically, research planning and budgeting, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) should allow real involvement of farmers, and others in the planning, thus increasing the accountability of research towards other stakeholders. Some research institutes have initiated multi-stakeholder committees to this end (Ampofo, pers. comm). Planning should also make resources/funds available to build and participate in partnerships and for experimentation by farmers. Locating the responsibilities for such funds as closely as possible with the people directly involved, including farmers, and the multi-actor partnerships often needed for planning and budgeting call for a certain amount of "free rein" for part of researchers' time and part of the budget (innovation funds). In reality, overall funding for agricultural research is declining in quite a few countries and, if available, depends very much on external donors with frequently changing agendas. Obviously, this is not a situation conducive to the institutionalization of PTD, which has a long time horizon.

PTD-related process issues should be included in the organization's M&E formats. This implies that M&E gives information not only about the technical parameters of the experiments, but also about issues such as the awareness of farmers' needs and potentials among researchers, the capacity of farmers and extension partners to continue experimenting on their own, and the extent of the spread of technologies. Social scientists have much to contribute to these issues.

At a meta-level, M&E of the changes occurring at the researchers' level, the way they approach collaboration with farmers and their interest in real farmer concerns, give an indication of the extent in which PTD has been institutionalized. Opondo et al. (2001) describe an attempt to develop and use such an M&E system, referred to as "outcome monitoring". This helps to put the issue of the spread of PTD within the research organization on the agenda and creates additional momentum in the process of institutionalization.

In terms of the internal organization, it seems counterproductive to create a special 'PTD Unit.' However, there will probably be a need for a 'PTD taskforce' or 'PTD team' that plans and coordinates the process of change; creates opportunities for training and learning; and facilitates links both within the organization and with other organizations concerned with PTD. Initially, this team may itself be actively involved in PTD activities in the field so that the institutional learning can be based on these experiences. A PTD learning platform playing the role of catalyst is also often necessary and can be created in collaboration with other organizations. Facilitation of networking and learning in a region or even in a country may then be included in its mandate. These units will probably only survive after donor funding ends if they are set up as closely as possible to existing coordination mechanisms and local funding sources.

A great variety of internal mechanisms can be used, adapted, or newly developed to encourage PTD and its institutionalization. These include:

Training and coaching staff in new ways of working will be needed almost without exception. This starts with a review of the roles and responsibilities of researchers in PTD as compared to their partners, leading to good insight on the required knowledge and skills profile. Researchers have an important role to play, through their analytical skills, in differentiating between cause and effect and in designing experiments that lead to clear results. Researchers have the knowledge or the links to knowledge on fundamental processes underlying the experiments as observed by farmers; and the skills to write and report results systematically.

At a more general level, researchers need to be able to engage in dialogues, listen rather than lecture, cooperate rather than order, but need not become the key facilitators of PTD meetings and other activities.

Good experiences with respect to training and coaching have been gained in sequential PTD training: several sessions interspersed with PTD-related assignments in the field or in the organization, each session building on the learning of the previous one and the work experience in between. An internal PTD team can play an important role in guiding and advising staff members between the formal training sessions. The training should be designed to create the will and ability of staff members to listen to farmers and appreciate their knowledge and ability to innovate. This is best achieved through direct interaction with farmers who are active in innovating and experimenting.

The Power Game, Decision Making and Room for Maneuver

The power game at higher levels turns research policy formulation issues and influence around, both from within the organization and from outside. Ways must be found to gain support from policymakers and high-level management for PTD. Allies within the organization need to be identified and their support needs to be tapped. At the same time, it is important to listen to the concerns of those people within the organization who are not in favor of PTD approaches, and to seek ways of alleviating their concerns, perhaps through adjustments in the approach foreseen. A key power issue is obviously control of funds. Mechanisms need to be created to allow farmer organizations and other end-users of research results to exercise influence on the policy of research and development institutes, and one way will be through farmer involvement in decisions on the use of research funds.

From the perspective of a change manager with a wish and/or mandate to strengthen PTD, a two-level approach is emerging from the cases. The first is concerned with gaining support from higher-level managers or policymakers, while the second involves strengthening PTD at intermediate and lower hierarchical levels.

In working 'upwards,' PTD advocates do well to 'tone-down' their wording and focus on the concerns and language effective at the various levels.

Individual researchers or research groups with field experience in PTD do well in building partnerships and networks to influence policymakers in their institutes and beyond. After policies have been changed, there will still be a need for a 'watchdog' function to monitor the progress of implementation. Efforts to create and maintain institutional support at higher levels can often also benefit from building up pressure for change from below, for example, by inducing intensive interaction with interested research staff to create examples of PTD and inviting reflection on these experiences. Thus, working 'upwards' often needs to be combined with and/or preceded by efforts to gain wider internal organizational support for PTD.

At the organizational level itself, research management should consciously search for opportunities to practice participatory planning, implementation, and M&E. In other words, listen to the experiences obtained at field level, review with relevant staff the lessons learned and base future planning for the organization, at least partly, on these.

The room for maneuver for individual researchers to engage in PTD is further determined to a considerable extent by the recognition and rewards they get for their PTD work.

Researchers may also be concerned that collaboration with other researchers in PTD and the regular sharing of progress and findings with peers and partners might endanger their sole right to publish final results. Will comments of peers necessarily lead to co-authorship? There seems no other way than to take these concerns seriously, put them on the table, and address them in each specific situation.

Norms, Values and Attitudes

Norms and values related to the mission and mandate of a research organization may refer to concerns for poverty reduction and the elimination of hunger, research relevance particularly for the poor, and the impact of innovation on the environment and social coherence as opposed to the norm that science is good if it generates technologies that work in technical terms.

Attitudes supportive of an effective PTD internal structure may include the conviction that problem solving in agriculture, as well as within the organization itself, requires contributions from all involved, that no one knows everything and no one knows nothing, and that listening and probing are as important a skill as lecturing. Facilitators of PTD-institutionalization efforts would do well to link up with experiences of socio-cultural change in organizations in other sectors, e.g., gender mainstreaming.

In the workshop, the issue of attitudinal change among individual researchers featured more strongly than change at the level of norms and values. Respect for the value of knowledge and farmers' and extension agents' experiences, combined with a more modest view on the value of one's own experience, is a crucial element in attitudinal change. Situations need to be created to cultivate mutual respect. Encouraging researchers to identify local innovation and informal experimentation is one way to foster such mutual respect. This can be followed by internal staff seminars discussing and analyzing the significance of local innovation for the way they work.

This approach has been applied quite successfully in the Indigenous Soil and Water Conservation (ISWC) Program, especially in Ethiopia and Tanzania (Kibwana et al., 2000). Staff at various levels in the organization can be exposed to farmer realities and farmer creativity through field days, study programs, farmer-innovation markets (ISWC Cameroon case study), traveling seminars and involvement in RRA/PRA exercises.

Training programs for PTD do well to take attitudinal aspects seriously and include in their designs any combination of the activities above. Designing selected training sessions following a Freirian approach to learning (cf. Hope and Simmel, 1984) helps to confront participants with their basic assumptions and thus creates critical awareness as a basis for personal attitudinal change (for examples of this approach to PTD training, see Chirunga and van Veldhuizen, 1997).

PTD Partnerships

While it is technically possible for research programs to embark on PTD programs on their own, almost all cases underlined the importance and great benefits to be obtained if PTD is undertaken in the context of strong partnerships. This includes partnerships with other research units or organizations, but more importantly those with extension, farmer organizations, and the private sector. Embarking on partnerships enables researchers to focus on what they are good at (i.e., analytical skills, experimental design, knowledge or link to knowledge on fundamental processes, writing and reporting), while relying on others for farmer mobilization or organization, networking and facilitation of evaluation and learning events, and the organization of input supply and marketing, for example.

Researchers face specific challenges in joining such partnerships. Research objectives need to be formulated widely if a convergence of objectives with other actors is to be achieved. They need to have flexibility in order to reach agreement with other organizations. An NGO is unlikely to be enthusiastic for a research partnership if the researcher wishes to work on a single aspect of one disease in one particular crop, unless it is a key threat to farmers in the area. Flexibility in the research offer can be expressed by including a certain amount of unallocated research support funds in program proposals so that other researchers can be drawn into the PTD process if critical issues arise beyond the competence of the lead researcher(s).

Research organizations need to provide enough time, staff skills, and open mechanisms for in-depth negotiation with potential partners, if only to overcome some of the historical feelings of mistrust that may be evident from NGOs and government extension agencies. Research proposals may have to include a start-up phase with specific sets of activities to this end.

Finally, researchers and their institutes may have to do more public relations to make their research capacities, and particularly their readiness to work in a PTD collaborative mode, widely known to possible partners, so that ultimately these partners will start approaching research for support and partnership.

The longer-term sustainability of collaborative research partnerships remains an area of concern. In certain situations partnerships may end when a specific research objective has been reached. However, because local innovation processes need to continue over time and because research and extension should be systematically supporting these processes, mechanisms are needed that regularly bring together farmers' concerns and research and extension services. Partnerships can be sustainable if funds are mobilized from 'regular', non-project sources and from contributions from all stakeholders.

The cases indicate that the decentralization of government structures in countries such as the Philippines and Uganda, which bring responsibilities and resources to the local level, may provide opportunities for local governments to become key sponsors for local innovation and PTD partnerships.

Conclusion

Incorporation of PTD in research institutes is possible but is in itself a multi-faceted social learning process (Röling, 1996) that starts often with changes at personal levels. A sufficiently long time frame and adequate flexibility in the process are crucial preconditions. In whatever form and way it is done, PTD ultimately will imply that accountability of researchers and their institutes is not only internally oriented to the main fund supporters, but expands to include farmers, other end-users and partners in PTD and civil society at large.

References

Chirunga, F. and L.R. van Veldhuizen. 1997. Daring to Learn: Report of a Training of Trainers in PTD/PRA, Masvingo, Zimbabwe. ETC, Leusden.

Groverman, V. and D.J. Gurung. 2001. Gender and Organizational Change: A Training Manual. ICIMOD, Kathmandu.

Guendel, S., J. Hancock and S. Anderson. 2001. Scaling-Up Strategies for Research in Natural Resources Management: A Comparative Review. Chatham, UK: Natural Resources Institute.

Haverkort, B., W. Hiemstra, C. Reijntjes and S. Essers. 1988. Strengthening Farmers' Capacity for Technology Development. ILEIA Newsletter 4 (3): 3-7.

Hope, A., S. Timmel and C. Hodzi. 1984. Training for Transformation: A Handbook for Community Workers. Mambo Press, Gweru, Zimbabwe.

IIRR. 2000. Going to Scale. IIRR, Silang, Cavite, Philippines.

Lizares-Bodegon, S., J. Gonzalves, S. Killough, A. Waters-Bayer, L. van Veldhuizen and M. Espineli (eds). Participatory Technology Development for Agricultural Improvement: Challenges for Institutional Integration. ETC Ecoculture/IIRR, Silang, Cavite.

Kibwana O.T., Mitiku H., L.R. van Veldhuizen and A. Waters-Bayer. 2000. Clapping with Two Hands. Bringing Together Local and Outside Knowledge for Innovation in Land Husbandry in Tanzania and Ethiopia - A Comparative Case Study. In: European Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension 27(3):133-142.

Röling, N.G. 1996. Towards an Interactive Agricultural Science. In: European Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension 2(4): 35-48.

Tichy, N.M. 1982. Managing Change Strategically: The Technical, Political and Cultural Keys. In: Organizational Dynamics, Autumn 1982.

van Veldhuizen, L., A. Waters-Bayer and H. de Zeeuw. 1997. Developing Technology with Farmers. A Trainer's Guide for Participatory Learning. Zed Books Ltd., London.

Contributed by:
Laurens van Veldhuizen, Ann Waters-Bayer, Scott Killough, Marise Espinelli and Julian Gonsalves
Email: waters-bayer@web.de

51
Scaling Up Through Participatory Trial Designs

Researchers, community activists, field workers and farm advisors are charged to work with many stakeholders and develop technologies that have widespread relevance. There are a number of successful approaches to this, from participatory breeding programs to farmer field schools. Many of these approaches involve experimentation, either through fostering learning and testing of technologies by farmers, or more formal trials for large-scale testing.

Participatory methods can be linked with trial designs to involve farmers and rural stakeholders in defining experimentation objectives and assessment of technology performance. Conducting surveys in conjunction with trials is one important tool that helps document farmer preferences and evaluation of the process, and of the technologies or varieties being tested. Detailed guides are available presenting information on how to carry out on-farm trials and complementary surveys (see for example, Mutsaers et al., 1997).

What are the Key Scaling Up Issues in Participatory Research

Quality interaction and investment of time and resources at a local level are critical to building relationships and conducting cooperative, participatory research. Heterogeneity of the biophysical landscape and the diversity of stakeholders with their different agendas are also a reality. These pose barriers to scaling up and out to reach a wide audience. Financial and human resource support requirements would have to be massive to engage many people in participatory action research.

It is possible to hurdle these obstacles if attention to 'scaling up' is addressed explicitly throughout the process, and participatory trial designs are used that foster:

To synthesize and develop lessons of wider interest from local learning and technology development, it is important to choose locations carefully for meta-analysis and for conducting trials. Locations need to be representative to facilitate scaling up and extrapolation. Location choice will also depend on the hypotheses being evaluated, the partners involved and the objectives, which are expected to evolve over time. In many cases, researchers, field workers and activists may want to work with communities at locations that represent different agroecosystems and cultural groups, including marginal to endowed sites that have different degrees of market access. Characterizing the physical and cultural landscape of the different sites and building quality relationships at the sites build a foundation for synthesis and scaling up efforts (Snapp and Heong, 2003). A wide range of past and new information sources can provide insight, including surveys, indigenous knowledge, geo-referenced information and participatory exercises to build relationships and understand the historical, cultural and environmental context. This leads to the following suggestions for conducting participatory research that can be scaled up to reach more people:

Trial Designs

Large-scale trial programs, with hundreds of on-farm sites, are often advocated for testing new varieties or soil-enhancing technologies across an entire region. At each site, a farmer compares a selected number of 'best bet' technologies (or varieties) to a local control. There is no replication at that site, but through the use of multiple sites the comparison is replicated many times over the landscape. This approach takes advantage of variation in environment and management from farm to farm. Statistical approaches such as adaptability analysis rely on this variation to test technology or variety adaptation to different levels of stress and environmental conditions (Hildebrand and Russell, 1996).

Another approach is to work at a fewer number of sites and involve large groups visiting these selected sites, to help in the evaluation process. The selected sites can be located on farmers' fields or at research stations. This intensive type of 'replicated within a site' approach frequently involves expert farmer panels (Sperling et al., 1993). Certain types of research on biological soil processes or participatory plant breeding selection from a large number of genotypes may require some degree of within site replication and the intensive, uniform management possible at a limited number of sites.

A third approach links the two trial designs together, providing a voice for farmers. The 'mother-baby' trial design methodically links 'replicated within a site' researcher-led mother trials with 'one site, one replica' farmer-led trials (Figure 1). A mother trial is centrally located in a village or at a nearby research station, and replicated at the site. Baby trials are located on farmer fields, designed and managed by farmers. Thus, each baby trial site is a replicate, comparing a sub-set of technologies or varieties.

Figure 1. Mother - Baby Trial Design Layout

The 'within site replicated' mother trials are conducted at central locations (on research stations, near schools or community centers) and compare a large number of technologies, such as different varieties grown at low and high fertility levels. On-farm baby trials compare a sub-set of the technologies, frequently those chosen by the farmer implementing the baby trial (Snapp et al., 2002). Participatory plant breeders have implemented mother and baby trials in a systematic manner using an incomplete block design to make sure all varieties are represented in an equal manner across the landscape (Witcombe et al., 2002).

For all types of trials, whether replicated within or across sites, there can be a continuum of participation. Trials can be led by farmers, conducted jointly by farmers and researchers or led by researchers with farmers acting as advisors. The extent of local involvement in trial design and implementation depends on the objectives of the endeavor. Experience and outcomes vary, depending on the level of engagement by farmers and other stakeholders. These experiences and outcomes are summarized as follows:

Participatory Trial Design as a Process

Investment of education, time and commitment to a joint process is essential on the part of all parties, in order to successfully carry out participatory trials. Whether farmers or researchers are the lead actors in the experimentation processes, attention to developing an iterative process is vital, to 'build-in' feedback and communication at each step. An example in presented in Table 1, from experiences in Malawi conducting mother and baby trials in partnerships with farmers to develop improved soil fertility technologies (Snapp et al., 2002). Note that frequent meetings were held with countrywide partners, and with local communities.

Surveys are important tools that have to be integrated throughout the process. Semi-formal interviews are also valuable, where diverse stakeholders and trial participants are asked open-ended questions. Responses to open-ended questions often provide new insights. This type of qualitative data can be statistically evaluated by determining the major categories represented by the answers, then calculating the percentage of responses per category.

In Malawi, short surveys were conducted to document farmer preferences, and detailed baseline characterization. Information about the farm wealth status and reliance on crop sales for income, and other demographic characteristics of the farmer was gathered. Farmer preference data could thus be put in a socio-economic perspective. It is important to be able to make inferences about how labor availability, income sources and farm market goals influence assessment of technologies. There are guides now available that provide statistical advice for preference ranking of technologies (Bellon and Reeves, 2002).

Choosing representative sites, and conducting in-depth characterization, are crucial to the scaling up process (Snapp and Heong, 2003). Then, analyses can be conducted across trial sites to determine the potential for wider-scale adoption of a technology. As shown in Table 1, the Malawi experience involved agro-ecosystem characterization of case study sites where mother and baby trials were carried out with farmers. Local data was collected on rainfall patterns and soil types, along with consulting government databases. Socio-economic characteristics were documented, such as infrastructure, market access and demographics. Conducting stakeholder analysis and local visioning exercises provided insights into history and goals of different groups in each area where we worked intensively.

In working with different organizations across Malawi, we found that the same trial design could be implemented in different ways, depending on local partners. All the partners were interested in increasing farmer participation, but levels of farmer involvement varied from site to site (Snapp et al., 2003). The institutional organization and goals of partners at each site made a difference. We worked with a wide range of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private industry, university and government partners. At some sites, particularly at sites where NGOs took the lead, farmers were lead actors. Farmers designed the comparisons, selected the types of technologies and varieties to compare and lay out the trials. Researchers and crop advisors (from NGOs and from government extension) acted as catalysts and information sources. Farmers were the lead.

In Figure 2 where farmer-led trial plots are represented, note that comparisons of technologies tend to be simple (1 or 2 technologies compared to a current system), involve large portions of a field and may be irregular in shape. The larger area involved allows farmers to fully judge the labor involved and scope of the potential benefits of a technology, as a realistic portion of the farm is represented.

Figure 2. Farmer-Led Trials
This frequently involves NGO or other farm advisors, large plots laid out informally and frequently simple, paired comparisons of a new option and current farmer practice.

At other sites, a joint effort was achieved by farmers and researchers working together. In Figure 3, cooperative trials are shown, which tended to involve slightly more complex comparisons, and necessarily, smaller plots. Finally, Figure 4 shows researcher-led comparisons which tended to involve a larger number of comparisons, with more rigidly controlled characteristics at each site (for example, weeding inputs might be more consistent from plot to plot in a researcher-led on-farm trial) and smaller, more regular sized plots. Scientific findings regarding biological processes such as levels of nutrient recycling were documented in greater detail at researcher-led sites.

Figure 3. Cooperative Effort
Farmers choose among the best bet options presented by researchers and extension. A comparison is conducted between these options and the farmer-designed controls – the farmer's best bet. Plots are laid out by farmers with researcher input.

Figure 4. Researcher-Led
Generally, researchers choose four or more best bet technology options to compare. These are a sub-set of all the options compared in the mother trial. Farmers manage the trial; researchers monitor farmer practice.

Statistical and Economic Analysis

Adaptability analysis is a useful regression approach that allows performance of technologies to be compared across a range of environments, where average yield or edaphic factors are used as an environmental index (Hildebrand and Russell, 1996). It is possible to evaluate trials conducted with replication at a site (mother trials), or replicated across sites (baby trials) and any combination using adaptability analysis. A useful aspect of this approach is the ability to test variety and technology performance under stressed conditions. This provides insight into the risks associated with different technologies. Farmers are interested in technologies which are low risk and perform across a wide range of environments. Regression type models such as adaptability analysis are also straightforward to understand, and lend themselves to presentations to a wide range of stakeholders.

Other statistical approaches to analyze participatory trial designs are described in Bellon and Reeves (2002). These include mixed models, like factor-analytic models for modeling variance and co-variance from multi-environment trial data. An incomplete lattice design for mother and baby trials has been used to evaluate stress-tolerant varieties of maize, and farmer-preferred rice varieties.

Economic analysis of net benefits is another valuable approach to evaluating technology performance. A detailed description of how to estimate net benefits associated with a technology is presented in a booklet by CIMMYT (1988).

Learning

Overall, this experience points out valuable lessons:

References

Bellon, M.R. and J. Reeves (eds). 2002. Quantitative Analysis of Data from Participatory Methods in Plant Breeding: URL http://www.cimmyt.org/Research/Economics/map/research_tools/manual/Quantitative/Contents.htm

CIMMYT. 1988. From Agronomic Data to Farmer Recommendations: An Economic Training Manual. Completely Revised Edition. Mexico, pp. 78: CIMMYT.

Hildebrand, P.E. and J.T. Russell. 1996. Adaptability Analysis: A Method for the Design, Analysis and Interpretation of On-Farm Research and Extension. Iowa State University. 189 pp.

Mutsaers, H.J.W., G.K. Weber, P. Walker and N.M. Fisher. 1997. A Field Guide for On-Farm Experimentation. IITA/CTA/ISNAR, Ibadan, Nigeria. 235 pp.

Snapp, S.S., M.J. Blackie and C. Donovan. 2003. Realigning Research and Extension Services: Experiences from Southern Africa. Food Policy 28: 349-363.

Snapp, S.S. and K.L. Heong. 2003. Scaling Up: Participatory Research and Extension to Reach More Farmers. In: Pound, B., S. S. Snapp, C. McDougall and A. Braun (eds.). Uniting Science and Participation: Managing Natural Resources for Sustainable Livelihoods. Earthscan, U.K. and IDRC, Canada.

Snapp, S.S., G. Kanyama-Phiri, B. Kamanga, R. Gilbert and K. Wellard. 2002. Farmer and Researcher Partnerships in Malawi: Developing Soil Fertility Technologies for the Near-Term and Far-Term Experimental Agriculture 38:411-431.

Sperling, L., M. E. Loevinsohn and B. Ntabomvura. 1993. Rethinking the Farmer's Role in Plant Breeding: Local Bean Experts and On-Station Selection in Rwanda. Experimental Agriculture 29:509-519.

Witcombe, J.R., L.B. Parr and G.N. Atkin (eds). 2002. Breeding Rainfed Rice for Drought-Prone Environments: Integrating Conventional and Participatory Plant Breeding in South and SE Asia. IRRI and DFID.

Contributed by:
Sieglinde Snapp
Email: snapp@msu.edu

52
Beyond Integrated Pest Management: From Farm Households to Learning Capacity and Innovation Systems

In 1989, the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation (NORAD) funded Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza (CATIE) to work in Nicaragua on integrated pest management (IPM). The initial project prescribed research, validation and technology transfer to make IPM more relevant for farm families with limited resources. The project is now finishing its third funding cycle, and has both broadened and deepened its approaches.

Looking Back: The Learning Path

The current phase titled "Regional Program for IPM and Coffee Agroforestry" focuses on observational skills, ecological and economic reasoning, decision-making capacity and learning cycles through multi-actor and multi-organizational participatory methods with more than 70 local and national organizations. It still does replicated research, but has incorporated new layers of working methods and linkages. Recently, we have coalesced this experience into a framework of organizational learning capacity linked to local and national innovation systems in which the flow of information and linkages for knowledge generation play a key role.

This paper briefly explains why and then describes the approaches, with attention to the complementarity of diverse dimensions.

Lessons Along the Learning Path

View from Farmers' Fields – Variability and Uncertainty

Farm households in Central America make crop and pest management decisions under extreme uncertainty. Hurricanes, droughts and even normal weather variability affect crop growth, cropping practices and food web dynamics. New pests have been introduced and routine pesticide use and other changes in cropping practices contribute to new pest problems. The farmgate prices for agricultural products fluctuate wildly, but markets have also diversified into niche products which were unknown a decade ago. Farm households themselves are not static as they move through child rearing and educating phases, bouts of sickness, off-farm opportunities for men and women and shifts in livelihood strategies.

Learning to Manage Under Variability and Uncertainty

The variability and uncertainty which characterize the decision-making environment for farm households calls for specific approaches in development programs. In the CATIE program, some key approaches include:

These approaches reverberate throughout the national research and extension system. Field extensionists and scientists should strengthen similar skills and apply similar routines to work more effectively to make IPM farmer-effective. Such methods apply as well with directors, leaders and policymakers.

Effective Linkages for Information Flow and Knowledge Generation

Supposedly we are in the information age, but that information is not always available where and when we need it and it may not be so easy to find. Farm households, rural communities, extensionists and scientists have opportunities to access information on ever-widening scales. The sources we generally think of are other farmers, extensionists and scientists. We often overlook traders, lenders and input sales staff, but information and ideas flow from them as well as from teachers, artisans, government officials as well as mass, scientific and technical media. We are learning to ask – how well are these sectors articulated in terms of information flow and how well do they interact for knowledge generation? This measures the capacity of diverse interest groups regionally and nationally to resolve problems and take advantage of opportunities.

Strengthening Capacity and Access to Information for Managing Ecological Variability

CATIE's IPM group in Nicaragua, since its inception in 1989, has been developing working methods to reorient training and research in IPM to farm family capacity to harness ecological processes in their farming practices. Key elements in the model are:

Farmer Participatory Group Learning and Experimentation by Crop Stage

Pre-training diagnostics show that small farmers have specific, piecemeal knowledge of their crops and the associated fauna. They are experimenters with exceptional experience with the range of weather situations that can occur in a given locality. However, they have a weaker understanding of life cycles and trophic relationships, are not familiar with specific diseases and their causes and often employ poorly-timed and ill-directed pest management practices. The participatory group learning approach by crop stage is designed to strengthen farmers' capacity for field observation, ecological reasoning, and planning and decision-making.

A typical learning routine begins prior to crop planting when farmers meet to discuss their crop and pest management practices and problems. Farmers and extensionists together then draw up a plan for regular meetings and the establishment of learning plots for experimenting with improved crop and pest management. In each of the events carried out in successive crop stages, farmers discuss the practices and problems in their fields and review costs to date. They discuss what alternative they have for strengthening the crop, making conditions less favorable for pests, making conditions more favorable for beneficial insects, and for controlling pests directly. Each event includes a field exercise to observe and quantify pest problems, crop vigor and beneficial and resident flora and fauna. Between each meeting, farmers complete scouting in their own fields and report the results at the next meeting. They may also conduct simple learning exercises and experiments with alternative management practices in their own fields. They compare their results with other farmers' results in the meetings. At the end of the cycle, farmers review crop vigor and pest problems during the crop cycle, analyze the effectiveness of their management decisions and plan for the next crop cycle.

Extensionists' Training in Ecology and Methods for Crop Stage Learning

Commonly, extensionists have general knowledge about a wide range of subjects, but are less skilled at using agro-ecological analysis to assess specific field problems. They have good relations with farmers to organize short training events, but often have little experience in planning a multi-event training process. To strengthen farmers' skills for decision-making based on ecological reasoning, extensionists must develop new knowledge and skills in the ecology of IPM and crop management. They must also learn to facilitate farmer learning rather than transfer technology. CATIE-MIP (NORAD) and its collaborators do this through a parallel training process by crop stage. Just as farmers move from group meetings into observation and experimentation in their fields, extensionists move from training sessions into practice with their farmer group (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Extensionist Training Works in Parallel to Farmer Group Learning and Experimentation and to the Crop Cycle. The crop stages orient farmer group learning and experimentation and parallel extensionists' training. At each crop stage, farmers review current problems, analyze alternatives and plan actions. Extensionists also meet to analyze the outcome of their previous farmer group meeting and to prepare for the next meeting. The example shown is for coffee, but the approach applies to any crop.

After a 2-3 day workshop which provides a technical and ecological overview of IPM in the crop, an introduction to participatory methods and training in small project formulation, each extensionist completes a participatory diagnostic and planning event with farmers and writes a small project proposal with objectives, activities and indicators. In the next 4-5 events, extensionists discuss their previous event with their farmer group, do field exercises to strengthen their understanding of the current crop phase and plan their next event with farmers. At the last event, extensionists analyze what happened with the crop during the year, report the results from the work with their farmer group with indicators and develop a proposal for improved farmer training for the following cycle.

Linking Training and Research Agenda to Farmer Management of Ecological Variability

For farmer and extensionist crop stage training to be effective, trainers must have access to certain elements: an ecological understanding of the variability in crop yields and food web dynamics, simple methods for scouting and decision-making, alternative management practices suitable to farmer knowledge and resources and a firm grounding in discovery learning, curriculum design and impact assessment. Typically, this information is incomplete and dispersed among many sources. Collaboration between CATIE and numerous counterpart institutions has shown that multi-institutional working groups can assemble this information into an ecological framework in successive approximations. These working groups bring together interested professionals from teaching, research and development institutions and projects. Such groups or sub-groups meet regularly to develop a database summarizing the state of IPM understanding and use among farmers, extensionists and specialists, a crop stage training curriculum for extensionists and farmers, a participatory and formal research agenda as well as links for scientific information exchange (Figure 2). Each of these elements can be updated regularly with data on pest levels and crop yields reported by farmer groups, studies of training impacts and results from experiments. These meetings also provide the opportunity to develop skills in participatory methods.

Figure 2. The Multi-Institutional Crop Working Groups. These groups achieve critical elements for effective use of IPM by farm families with group activities which strengthen and integrate individual and small group activities among scientists and trainers.

Multi-Institutional Planning and Monitoring of Capacity for IPM Implementation

The design of the first funding phase (1989-1994) wisely focused on national capacity for IPM implementation, a perspective emphasized by each successive phase of CATIE' projects in Nicaragua, although our perspective on the nature of national capacity has evolved. CATIE has approached this challenge by working multi-institutionally, with universities, the national research and extension institute, growers' associations and non-government organizations (NGOs) with a wide variety of orientations. The organization of the first regional working group was proposed by counterparts facing multiple requests for collaboration from CATIE and other projects. Quickly, the groups developed useful functions of diagnosis, information sharing and strategic planning through regular meetings and promotion of IPM and sustainable agriculture through regional fora (Figure 3). By 1998, there were four crop groups, five regional groups and two theme groups involving over 50 organizations. These groups developed an annual work plan presented in a logframe format with indicators.

Figure 3. Collaboration Among National and Local Institutions and Organizations at Several Levels Designed to Strengthen National IPM Capacity. Groups of farm families increasing their pest and crop management ability are the reference point for the system. The other levels in the system operate to make the work more effective with farm families. This system links decision-makers through levels of specialists, trainers and extensionists to put IPM in the hands of the farm families.

At the national level, an adhoc commission which was organized to respond to a severe outbreak of white fly in vegetable crops evolved into the national IPM committee. This committee, made of representatives from universities, projects and public bodies, worked to articulate activities among the regions and the national crop working groups, to develop a national IPM agenda and to influence policy. Middle-level decision-makers have kept the committee active and have occasionally been able to bring in institutional leaders and policymakers for yearly reviews and policy debates. Multi-institutional planning and monitoring of the capacity for IPM implementation has had a crucial role in ongoing improvement in training programs by linking the field training work to institutional decision-makers of participant organizations.

Organizational Learning Capacity and Innovation Systems

Throughout most of the years of project execution, the CATIE IPM projects directed its efforts for organizational strengthening through groups of protagonist actors – IPM specialists and field technicians who were responsible for IPM implementation with farm households and decision-makers whom we viewed as synonymous with their organizations. We assumed that these collaborators would discuss their experiences with our IPM project according to the internal procedures and criteria of their own organizations and apply the resulting lessons to develop more and better IPM programs.

In the third phase, as a strategy for more measurable and sustainable impacts, we proposed that once the NORAD-funded program ended, organizations would develop more and better IPM programs. A count of new IPM projects and proposals was easy to measure, but we also faced the challenge of measuring improved organizational capacity. We decided to define organizational capacity as the capacity to learn in response to current and future challenges. These are numerous in Central America – global trade agreements, regional competition, environmental degradation, equity in development, national and organizational financial crises, climate change. We asked: How well does the organization seek out, transform, re-combine and generate information to produce its outputs with the appropriate content of information and knowledge for current and future clients?

The CATIE team joined with a Central American Project for Innovation and Sustainable Development-Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua (SUDESCA-UNAN), Nicaraguan Agriculture Foundation (FUNICA), nine universities and research institutes and seven field organizations in Nicaragua to carry out three participatory studies:

The analysis generated animated debate and reflection, because although collaborations are an important source of information and financial resources, the organizations found that they invest only minimal effort in the evaluation of their impact. CATIE discovered that, in spite of many years of collaboration, we had very little familiarity with the core objectives and activities of our partners. All organizations agreed that we needed improved procedures to negotiate collaborative projects more in line with plans and objectives and to identify and incorporate lessons learned into our on-going programs. Few organizations had mechanisms to track the availability of new knowledge and even fewer tracked future prospects for their knowledge products. Internally, their professionals had few opportunities to process and interpret information and knowledge, except in their teaching programs.

These results were also used to discuss how well organizations and sectors are articulated multi-sectorially in terms of information flow and knowledge generation to solve problem, identify opportunities and innovate. In a workshop with representatives of our partner organizations we created a diagram of linkages among sectors (Figure 4). It was not surprising to find that research and field organizations were oriented towards better communication with each other and with farmers, although not with farmers' organizations. However, other sectors, traders and lenders had better communication with the farmers. Research and field organizations had relatively little communication with traders, lenders and the input sector. Even though the different sectors may not have common goals, participants agreed that the capacity to respond to problems and opportunities depends on the flow of information among sectors from farm to market.

Figure 4. Communication Links Among Sectors in the Nicaraguan Agricultural Innovation System from the Perspective of Research and Field Organizations, Farmers and Agroindustry. The darker the line, the more fluid and informed the communication. The circle and line on the outer edge of each box indicate communication with others of the same sector and international communication respectively.

Pending Tasks – Information Flows and Knowledge Generation to Manage Variability

Although we have identified the need to improve the flow of information from commercial sectors including traders, lenders and commercial input suppliers to research and field organizations and farmer associations, the question remains how to do this. These sectors are traditionally seen as adversaries that charge high interest rates, pay low prices, get most of the profit from agricultural production and sell unneeded and toxic pesticides. How can we harness this discord through methods that improve the capacity of the system to respond to problems and opportunities?

Now that we have developed a perspective of the flow of information in the social process of innovation, a second challenge is how to monitor the linkages among sectors. This is a call for strengthening the methods of multi-organizational working groups, networks and coalitions that may serve a monitoring function. How do we know that the local and national innovation system is becoming more effective through the diverse efforts to improve information flow?

A third challenge is to revisit what we think we already do well in our work with participatory learning and experimentation. Are there opportunities for adjustment and improvement to make our collaborative projects more effective? Can we strengthen our partner organizations' capacity to learn? Can our collaborative projects contribute to more effective linkages among sectors and greater system articulation based on the positive use of discord?

References

Monterey, J. and F. Guharay. 1997. Proceso Investigacion-Transferencia Participativa con Comunidades de Productores Horticolas. In: Faessert, C., K. Prins, J. Oduber and S. Wesphal (eds). Memoria Taller de Investigacion Participativa: Generacion e Intercambio de Conocimientos por y con Familias Campesinas Nativas. CATIE. Turrialba. pp 42-59.

Staver, C. 1998. Managing Ground Cover Heterogeneity in Perennial Crops Under Trees. From Replicated Plots to Farmer Practice. In: Buck, L., J. Lassoie and E. Fernandes (eds). Agroforestry in Sustainable Agricultural Systems. CRC Press. pp 67-96.

Staver, C. and F. Guharay. 2001. Building Integrated Pest Management Practices in Central America: Experiences of CATIE. In: Maredia, K., D. Dkouo and D. Mota-Sanchez (eds). Integrated Pest Management in the Global Arena. CABI International, Wallingford, UK.

Staver, C., F. Guharay, D. Monterroso and R. Munschler. 2001. Designing Pest-Suppressive Multi-Strata Perennial Crop Systems: Shade-Grown Coffee in Central America as a Case Study. Agroforestry Systems 53: 151-170.

Staver, C. 2002. Farmer Learning Linked to Ecological Processes for Better Pest Management: Challenges to CATIE and Its Partners (In Spanish). Revista MIP y Agro-ecologica 65: 21-33.

Staver, C. 2004. MIP en Manos de Familias Rurales. Serie Tecnica Informe Tecnico No. 334. CATIE. Managua, Nicaragua.

Contributed by:
Charles Staver and Falguni Guharay
Email: catienic@mipafcatie.org.ni

53
Institutionalizing Participatory Research in Renewable Natural Resources in Bhutan

Historically in Bhutan, research and development on natural resources was sector-specific, commodity-and discipline-focused and research-led with little community involvement. The Renewable Natural Resource Research Center (Bajo) of the Ministry of Agriculture piloted a watershed Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) project focusing on improving resource productivity to improve livelihoods through integrated natural resource management with the participation of local communities. The project involved a participatory and integrated approach to diagnose problems, plan and implement necessary interventions in conjunction with conventional research on-station.

This paper describes how participatory action research (PAR) in the field influenced changes in the community, at the Bajo Research Center, and more widely in the agricultural research system in Bhutan.

Recognizing the Need for Participatory Approaches

The research approach of Bajo evolved from a focus on single commodities, to one of farming systems and then to integrated natural resource management (NRM). Organized and systematic agricultural research began in Bhutan only in 1982 when the Center for Agricultural Research and Development (CARD) was created. In 1984, the team at Bajo, in collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), developed a program of research on rice improvement through new varieties and management to address food security needs of the Bhutanese. Similar to agricultural research elsewhere in the world at that time, it became evident that constraints to increased yield had complex and interrelated causes. The next phase of the research focused more on the development of farming systems technologies and strengthening the human capacity of the Ministry of Agriculture.

In this earlier work, farmers had little involvement in setting research priorities, planning and implementation of research. In addition, most researchers from Bajo were trained only in natural sciences and social questions relevant to the research did not occur to them. Scientists had not been trained to work directly with communities, to ask about their perspectives, or to consider some of the social aspects related to the livelihoods of the people. At this time, these ideas were very new to conventional research.

Starting about a decade ago, staff at the research centers began to be exposed to concepts of participatory approaches through learning-by-doing and on-farm research, trainings and workshops, and interactions with donors and visitors. Recognizing the need to work directly with farmers, the team decided to integrate participatory approaches into their research program, and was one of the first organizations in Bhutan to do so. Initially, this work was primarily on-farm, and the team soon realized that they were neglecting the linkages to other natural resources often managed by farmers or communities in different ways. For instance, given the valley-type agriculture in Bhutan, the forests provide livestock fodder and organic materials for fertility development and regulate water availability for farming in different watersheds. The farming systems research program worked primarily on private lands and did not consider farmers' reliance on common property resources, such as forests and water, to meet their livelihood needs.

In collaboration with communities who were facing problems of limited resource productivity and poverty in Lingmutey Chu, a nearby watershed, the Bajo research team planned a pilot project employing a multi-sectoral and integrated approach, linking crops, livestock, forests and water, aiming to enhance productivity. In this work, the aim was to improve linkages between farmers, researchers and extension workers to expand research scope from solely on-farm to include broader resource systems, and include participation of local communities. The team had begun to recognize the importance of community participation to any activity planning -- in diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation.

The research team consisted primarily of natural scientists: soil scientists, water engineers, horticulturists, foresters, entomologists, livestock specialists and agronomists. Only recently, one social scientist joined the team. The CBNRM and participatory approaches were new not only to the research team but also to the farmers!

Implementing Participatory Approaches

The team used an approach of combining participatory methods with traditional survey methods and natural science research (e.g., measurements of hydrology, soil fertility, etc.) to understand problems and community needs. These processes were new to the research team that 'learned by doing' in implementing tools from trainings in the field. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools such as participatory mapping, wealth categorization, transect walks and focus group discussions were extensively used. After an in-depth participatory analysis with local resource users, resource use patterns, management issues (e.g., access and control) and conflicts over resource use became clearer to both researchers and community members themselves. Upon understanding of the issues, interventions were developed by the communities and then facilitated by the research team. On-farm technical interventions were based on suggestions from farmers and some from researchers based on their knowledge and experience elsewhere. Areas of interventions included soils improvement, irrigation management, fodder improvement, forestry plantations, cereals and horticulture and institution building and skill development.

Project Impacts in the Community and Beyond: Changes in Doing Research

Overall, the project led to a number of positive changes in the communities in the watershed, such as:

The project has transformed the way the Research Center at Bajo operates:

The Bajo research team has learned some key lessons:

Scaling-up CBNRM Approach in Research and Development in Bhutan

The RNRRC Bajo was the first institution in the country to pilot a watershed CBNRM approach. The Lingmutey Chu case also had effects beyond Bajo to research and development in the renewable natural resource sector in Bhutan. Sharing project experiences with other agencies and farmers through cross-visits and farmer-to-farmer exchanges helped create awareness and further understanding of CBNRM and participatory methods. Senior ministry officials also visited the project and gave political support for the CBNRM effort. Project staff who gained experiences working in Lingmutey Chu later moved to other RNR research centers, and championed the CBNRM approach in activities. Other CBNRM learning projects were developed and implemented in other parts of the country.

A pool of CBNRM 'movers' committed to participatory research and development is growing in Bhutan. A national level Coordinating Unit has been established to consolidate research and learning on field experiences on participatory integrated natural resource management. A national CBNRM framework has been developed that provides guiding principles and suggestions related to community action in natural resources management. It also provides guidelines and strategies to operationalize and upscale CBNRM programming in our work and in policy adjustments that may also be needed in the future. The framework advocates CBNRM approaches and programs that are deeply rooted in the field learnings of RC Bajo and the Lingmutey Chu watershed project, such as:

Conclusion

The CBNRM work by the RNRRC Bajo team has influenced the way that the research center approaches the whole process of research, including problem definition, methods, programming and links to policy and extension. This work has enabled the research team to attune programs to community realities so that research processes now lead more directly to improvements in the resource base and productivity, improved livelihoods and strengthened social assets in communities. The team has recognized the value of participatory methods to address resource management issues, but believe that participatory approaches can be most successful when used in conjunction with conventional research and technological know-how in NRM. In order to scale-up these approaches more widely within the research system in Bhutan, an emphasis should be placed on supporting young scientists emerging in the research system to have important qualities of commitment and willingness to learn, and to be able to work with farming communities in a participatory way.

Reference

Gurung, T.R. 2003. Companion Modeling to Improve Water Sharing Among Villages at Rice Transplanting in Upper Lingmuteychu Watershed of Central-West Bhutan. CoRRB MoA.

Contributed by:
Sangay Duba, Mahesh Ghimiray and the Bajo RNRRC Project Team
Email: sduba@druknet.bt
Email: mgHIMIRE@druknet.bt

54
Community-Based Natural Resource Management and its Scaling Up in Guizhou, China

Guizhou, located in the southwest, is one of the poorest provinces in China and about half its population belongs to ethnic minority groups. These groups mainly inhabit the mountainous rural areas where they manage complex production systems consisting of irrigated and rainfed rice fields, less productive uplands and grasslands, forested areas and so-called "wastelands." Problems that people face include low yields, little crop diversification, forests that in general are not in good health, and overgrazed common grasslands.

Since the early 1980s, China has undergone rapid economic transformation from a centrally planned-economy to a market-oriented economy. As a result of the economic reforms, the commune regime in rural China collapsed in 1980-1982. After the breakdown of the commune regime, farming lands, both paddy fields and upland fields, were contracted out to individual households. This was formalized through certificates.

This was called the household responsibility system. At the same time, the other natural resources such as forests, grasslands, wetlands and water systems became the "commons," i.e., owned and managed by the individual community/village.

The collapse of the communal system was sudden and no new management mechanisms were designed to fill in the gap. It also proved difficult to revive the traditional community management systems and practices that existed before the commune regime (with the exception of a few remote rural ethnic communities whose livelihoods had not been affected that strongly). At the same time, new "external" influences and powers - markets, government policies and development interventions - were beginning to exercise a very strong influence (Sun Qiu, 2004).

As a result of the reforms and subsequent changes, China's natural resources have dramatically been degraded and damaged. To address the issues of resource degradation and biodiversity, the Chinese government has developed some strategies:

However, these strategies are not achieving the desired results. Reasons are the lack of manpower to enforce the laws and state regulations, and the resource protection programs not being community-focused and people-centered. Another limitation of the State's influence concerns the day to day (minor) violations of proper natural resource use that often happen in local communities. State laws and regulations are frequently too general in nature to address these violations and the social dynamics underlying them. Although the promoted strategies are required, their implementation is inadequate and does not resolve the problem of resource degradation.

The problem with fully privatized management systems is that especially small (poor) farmers have more risks to endure. Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) provides an alternative approach to address natural resource management issues at the local level. Local institutional building for collective actions for resource management is a major theme in a CBNRM approach. This means supporting the (formal and informal) organization of farmers, and empowerment with improved capacities and a supportive institutional environment.

Putting CBNRM to Practice: Getting Started

In 1995, a multidisciplinary research team at the Guizhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences (GAAS), funded by the International Development Research Center (IDRC), initiated research addressing the problems outlined above. The team decided to introduce and practice CBNRM in two villages, Dabuyang and Xiaozhai in Kaizou township of Changsuan County.

Building on Local Knowledge and Practice for Local Institutional Development

Using participatory appraisal tools, the team described and analyzed current household and community-based management practices; evaluated the impact of economic, sociocultural and agro-ecological factors on the natural resource base in the villages; and identified constraints and opportunities for technical and policy interventions aimed at improving livelihoods and the sustainable management of land, water and trees (Chen Deshou et al., 2001).

The project activities also included clarifying the use right of the resources, setting up and experimenting with community-based management groups, making new natural resource access, use and management rules and regulations based on customary norms. The villagers were mobilized to undertake new collective actions. They contributed their time, labor and money, and took the responsibility to manage the natural resources together. They also shared the benefits (Zhou Pidong et al., 1998).

The local villages have a tradition to formulate local regulations to manage the whole village. This includes how to deal with thieves, crop destruction cases, and security. Based on these local regulations, several management regulations were formulated to take care of the natural resources, with some people assigned to enforce these regulations: for water, road, cattle and forestland in Dabuyang and for water and forestland in Xiaozhai. All these regulations were formulated by the villagers (in a series of meetings) and distributed to each household.

Widening Horizon and Expanding Efforts

In 1998, after three years of research work and based on promising results, the GAAS project team expanded its efforts. A new phase of work tested and validated the experiences generated from 1995-1998 in four new villages while work in Dabuyang and Xiaozhai continued and expanded. In the new villages, participatory analyses of resource management systems were carried out and constraints and opportunities for interventions were identified. The research team also broadened the involvement of key stakeholders, actively including local and provincial-level administrators and policymakers.

In Phase II, the team furthered its efforts in the setting up and strengthening folk regulations of resource use and management that complement State laws. For example, minor damage to natural resources often occurs (e.g., a small bundle of firewood is taken away, a small tree is cut in a collectively-managed forest or from other people's forest land) that cannot be dealt with by State laws as there are no specific items in the State forestry laws that discuss them). Village regulations and folk agreements address these concerns and contribute to an effective natural resource management.

In addition, the team integrated PM&E into the research cycle, providing them with concepts and tools to reflect critically on the research process and the meaning of participation. This further strengthened learning and increased accountability and effectiveness because PM&E emphasizes not only what is being monitored and evaluated, but also who is measuring and how various concerns and interests are negotiated and represented (Vernooy et al., 2003).

This allowed the team to obtain a better understanding of the conceptual, methodological and practical aspects of the CBNRM approach. Five key principles of CBNRM were identified:

Expansion of the CBNRM Approach to Policy Level

In 2001, the research team realized that the project's initial success would remain largely small-scale without the full involvement of the government. On the other hand, the government had not yet fully recognized the positive impacts on livelihoods and the natural resource management practices of the rural communities following a CBNRM approach. Trying to transfer research results from the CBNRM project at the local level to policymakers at higher levels became the objective of the new phase of research. IDRC and Ford Foundation jointly funded the new phase.

The overall goal is to scale up and institutionalize the CBNRM approach into government spheres and among local communities for sound natural resource management and sustainable rural development in Guizhou Province. This goal is to be achieved mainly by partnership development, capacity building and dissemination of research results for policy change. While identification of issues, principles and factors affecting in scaling up process is the core research component of the project, the actual implementation is translated into research, training and advocacy (Sun Qiu, 2001). These three components are integrated in both "vertical and horizontal" scaling up processes as outlined in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Strategy for CBNRM Scaling-up Processes in Guizhou Province, China

This scaling up/out approach represents a considerable methodological challenge. The team is experimenting with combing a horizontal and a vertical strategy to tackle it. "Horizontally," the focus was on community to community interactions to build a strong social base (e.g., farmer to farmer extension); "vertically," on government-community cooperation and multi-stakeholder partnership development to promote the recognition of community-based institutions for natural resource management (e.g., joint action research). Meanwhile, the team was encouraged by the fact that the government had adopted a policy in support of participatory village poverty-alleviation planning, a village autonomy law, and other people-centered guidelines (Sun Qiu, 2001).

Progress Made so Far

The township government has already included scaling out of the CBNRM approach in its 2004 workplan. There are now 29 villages in the township (out of 37) involved in testing the CBNRM approach. In these project villages, 30 management agreements have been approved and results are very promising. Management systems regulations are effective and township officials and villagers begin to have more dialogue compared to before. There is an evident change in attitude of township officials and they have started to integrate gender perspective into their daily work. In villagers' committee election this year, the township officials required that all the four administrative villages must select one woman in the administrative village committee (this never happened before). Three women were selected in the four villages.

The villagers are becoming more confident in approaching officials to solicit funds for community development. Priorities are agreed to after long discussions. Villagers also, especially the women, begin to initiate some activities to strengthen their capacities and improve their lives. The most important change of all is that more opportunities and options are created for the villagers and they have begun to be active in managing their natural resources, they have ownership of the process, and carry out or at least try out sustainable management practices.

In terms of scaling up, in December 2003, the county government has requested the Poverty Alleviation Office to adopt the CBNRM approach in all of the county's poverty-alleviation activities. One of the county leaders said about this request: "The CBNRM flower is already blooming in Kaizuo and now we hope that it will bear fruit in Changshun." In effect, the CBNRM scaling up approach was selected as one of the best-qualified suggestions of government programs and actions by the Changshun county government.

Changes are also happening at higher levels of government. The prefecture governor asked the project team to provide him some lessons and reading materials about CBNRM. Township officials also advocated adopting the CBNRM approach, but this will require follow up. The provincial government has gradually recognized CBNRM and provided funds to support the project. The Provincial Poverty Alleviation Offices invited the team to do a consultancy and provide training to the officials who are working with the poverty alleviation line agencies. The project team members succeeded in getting funds from the Guizhou Department of Science and Technology to scale up the CBNRM approach. The Ministry of Science and Technology from Beijing visited the project site, evaluated the work, and is planning to support in scaling up the CBNRM approach at the national level. Some of the work detailing the approach has been published by the influential national magazine Outlook Weekly.

These outcomes are contributing to improved livelihoods of villagers, towards stronger roles in decision-making about natural resource use and management in particular by women, and a gradual shift in the (power) relationships between villagers and government officials. Through nine years of efforts, the natural resources, living conditions and the welfare of villa–gers are being improved in Kaizuo township.

There are now about 9000 mu of forests that are growing well; 90% of the rice varieties (except sticky rice ones) being used are good yielding hybrid varieties and more than 60% of maize varieties are good yielding hybrid varieties. There are nine new drinking water systems and four irrigation water systems benefiting about 550 households. There are eight new roads in use that allow 500 households to go to the market and access other services. There are about 1000 mu of fruit trees and crops (including strawberry) that are growing well and bringing in good income. Other alternative income-generating activities are pursued, such as mushroom production and virus-free potato cultivation. There are four villages that run an animal bank with 230 households as beneficiaries.

Conclusions and Lessons

Through our action research efforts we found out that scaling up CBNRM in China is a difficult endeavor. Most of the government officials lack the motivation and incentives to adopt CBNRM even though they recognize the usefulness of CBNRM. There are no "CBNRM" ministry nor policies in the country even though many government agencies have recognized that their programs are not effective. There is a lot of talk about poverty alleviation but how to implement successful programs remains a big question.

One of the more obvious answers, for us, is the performance evaluation system of government officials in China. In the recently modified Constitution, "people-centred" is included as a criteria and the central government requires that officials should have the "right perspective and assessment" of their achievements. This is encouraging for scaling up a CBNRM approach. How to change the institutional arrangements and policy-making mechanisms and daily practices that are needed to create the space for meaningful community participation in natural resource management is still a question and challenge, however.

Horizontal scaling out is easier than vertical scaling up. Villagers and township officials are more directly exposed to the CBNRM approach and this allows for more face-to-face interactions and direct involvement. Township officials are closer to villagers than country officials and more accountable to them in many ways. As a result, critical reflections follow more easily. Their work results are easily recognizable and villagers give strong support to activities that will improve their daily lives.

Cross-village visit are very effective for horizontal scaling out. Villagers are readily interacting with each other, listening and observing, and trying out new things in their own locations. Women in particular have been very eager and active to take on new ideas and put them to work.

Here are some of the things we have learned so far in rethinking and adapting CBNRM to the Chinese reality.

Meaningful and strong participation of the villagers is still difficult.

The villagers (men and women) can participate in government projects to some extent as long as the interests of the government officials are not seriously affected. Several of the government officials phrased this as follows: "If we give all the decision-making power to the villagers, what are we going to do? We will lose our jobs!"

Improving villagers' and village head's abilities in organizing themselves and their confidence to approach the officials is very important.

Villagers, in particular women, usually do not have a chance to approach officials and communicate with them. Now, they begin to have a chance to meet the officials, but still lack the confidence to express and defend their ideas. Sometimes, they worry that their idea is wrong or risky. One villager expressed this as follows: "I worry whether what I say is appropriate and if it will be accepted or adopted by the officials. Will they like my idea? I am not so sure" (Yuan Juanwen et al., 2003).

Integrating the CBNRM approach into the government's daily activities is critical.

Although several line ministries of Changshun County have been trying to adopt CBNRM in their projects and the Kaizuo township has been implementing it in several small grant projects, it does not mean CBNRM has been fully integrated into the government system. This stage is just a start of the integration process. Officials only practice CBNRM only in some projects. How to engage them more fully remains a challenge. One township official said: "I am interested in being involved in CBNRM activities, but there are so many important tasks I must finish, otherwise, I will have problems in passing the annual evaluation" (Yuan Juanwen et al., 2003).

Improving the township and county officials' abilities to implement small grants projects is needed.

In the county committee, the members are from line ministries, but many have since changed positions. We feel that we need to involve more staff more actively. This requires the permission from the government leaders and their commitment to keep the same people involved until the end. As they are not used to this approach of managing projects, training them how to be more participatory in their jobs and in project management is necessary.

Attitude change and support of country and township leaders are critical to scaling up CBNRM approach.

Leaders play a very important role in giving scaling-up some space, in time coordination, in human resource inputs and in other resource inputs for the process. It is crucial to find cooperative leaders. There is also a need to discuss with them options for win-win activities. Usually they do not want to take a lot of risks to try the CBNRM approach. One official said: "If the leader would allow me to join CBNRM activities, I would like very much to join..." (Yuan Juanwen et al., 2003).

Coordination with different line ministries is important - there is a need to strategize about coordination.

The team realized that their coordinating role has become more and more complex. Coordination needs to be approached more strategically. The team assumed that since the county leaders agreed to be part of the project, they would also coordinate the project efforts at the line ministry level. The team has learned that, although many efforts were made, this is not a given.

Partnership building needs to be based on a set of negotiable and non-negotiable criteria - government standards and CBNRM principles.

The government has a preference for large-scale projects. Officials tend to adhere strictly to government standards in biogas production system, in reforestation, in orchard development, etc. They do not want to take the risks to be accountable to the villagers and/or to hand over leadership and decision-making power to them. The team realized the need to be better prepared to deal with this aspect of cooperation and scaling up, in other words, with the politics of government operations and their service delivery mode. There is a need to compromise, facilitate and negotiate. In order to do this, we have to be clear on the negotiable and non-negotiable elements, so as to find space for integrating the CBNRM approach (Sun Qiu et al., 2002).

Anticipate the different interests of various stakeholders.

In relation to the government's bias for large-scale projects, the team needed to raise the issues of feasibility and what is real success. The technical feasibility of the project might be clear from the government's perspective, but the social, gender and organizational aspects are often not considered. A clear example is the biogas project. The team is now consulting on how to address some difficulties in reaching the required number of household participants and how feasible it is considering the reality in the village. We also argued to be more flexible in dealing with different village situations.

The team needs to strengthen its advocacy and training capacities.

Most of the team members are researchers from natural science disciplines. We are not used to speaking in public and lack experience in policy advocacy. It is necessary to develop "charm" and self-confidence in talking with officials and enhance our speaking skills. Now, we have to act as researchers, trainers, negotiators, communicators, advocators, mobilizers and mentors. Further graduate level training in different social and natural sciences would be beneficial.

To conclude, an effective scaling up strategy requires a diversity of action-oriented initiatives that combine "horizontal" and "vertical" elements allowing government staff to become aware about the strengths, challenges and advantages of CBNRM, experiment with the approach, and adopt it in policies, programs and projects. This is a time-consuming and very challenging process.

References

Chen Deshou, Xia Yuan, He Yuanlong, Pan Jiawen, Zhou Pidong and Sun Qiu. 1997. Practices and Realizations on CBNRM in the Mountainous Area of Guizhou Province, China. In: Community-Based Natural Resource Management in Asia. Papers presented at an IDRC Workshop, Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry. pp. 85-97.

Chen Deshou, Zhou Pidong, Pan Jiawen, Sun Qiu, Xia Yuan, Yuan Juanwen, Li Zhinan and Zhao Zeyin. 2001. Community-Based Natural Resource Management in Mountainous Areas of Guizhou Province. Final Technical Report Phase 2. Guiyang: GAAS.

Shi Xingrong and Shi Xiangzhou. 2003. Guizhou Poverty Alleviation Practice: Empowerment is Better than Giving Money. Outlook Weekly, Xinhua News Agency, Beijing.

Sun Qiu. 2001. Promotion of Sustainable Rural Development by Scaling Up CBNRM Approach in Guizhou Province. Project Proposal. Guiyang: GAAS.

Sun Qiu. 2004. Development of Community-Based Institutions for Sustainable Natural Resource Management in Rural Guizhou, China. Wageningen: WUR. PhD Research Proposal.

Sun Qiu, Yuan Juanwen and Wei Xiaoping. 2002. Promotion of Sustainable Rural Development by Scaling Up CBNRM Approach in Guizhou Province. First Annual Technical Report. Guiyang: GAAS.

Vernooy, R., Sun Qiu and Xu Jianchu (eds). 2003. Voices for Change: Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation in China. Kunming: YSTP and Ottawa: IDRC.

Yuan Juanwen, Sun Qiu, Wei Xiaopin and Ou Guowu. 2003. Promotion of Sustainable Rural Development by Scaling Up CBNRM Approach in Guizhou Province. Second Annual Technical Report. Guiyang: GAAS.

Zhou Pidong, Chen Deshou, Pan Jiawen, Sun Qiu and Xia Yuan. 1998. Community-Based Natural Resource Management in Mountainous Areas of Guizhou Province. Final Technical Report. Guiyang: GAAS.

Contributed by:
Sun Qiu, Yuan Juanwen, Wei Xiaoping and Ou Guowu
Email: qiu_sun@yahoo.com