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Because FSD has its roots in farming systems research, the following comments on approaches within FSR are applicable to the technology research activities of FSD.
The term FSD often is used loosely. An activity is considered to be a legitimate part of the technology research function of FSD if the following situations hold:
A distinctive feature of FSR, or rather FSD, is that a systems perspective is constantly borne in mind. Within this framework, one can look at either a small or a large number of variables in the system. In general, because of the complexities of simultaneously handling a large number of variables, most FSR programmes have tended to limit the number of variables they study and to regard the other factors that influence the farming system as parameters or constants.
Figure 3 2: Progression in farming systems thinking
Three general approaches to FSR or FSD with a technology generation focus, have been defined relating to the number of variables being investigated. These approaches can be described as FSD 'with a pre-determined focus', 'in the small', and 'in the large' [Norman and Collinson, 1986], In a sense [Norman and Lightfoot, 1992], these types represent an evolution in FSD as techniques have been developed to handle progressively more complex situations -- defined as involving a higher ratio of variables to parameters, The progression, which is illustrated in Figure 3.2, where it has been expanded to four phases, can be articulated as follows:
These notions, particularly the last two, have been largely unexplored until recently, when techniques have evolved to handle complex situations in which the ratio of variables to parameters is high. Formal modelling techniques by themselves generally have limited value in addressing such situations because of the complexity of the relationships and the degree of understanding that is required initially to develop a realistic model. However, the major breakthrough that has occurred is the ability to pursue a less formal or more informal modelling approach through application of farmer participatory type techniques that, in essence, involve using farmers' minds as computers!
BOX 3.1: FSD WITH A 'PRE-DETERMINED FOCUS' ON SPECIFIC TECHNOLOGY
Researchers in station-based programmes often want FSD workers to evaluate specific technologies they have developed to see how they fit in with constraints of the farming system currently used by farmers. This type of work is referred to as FSD with a 'pre-determined focus' or 'predetermined technology focus,' In Botswana, FSD teams and participating farmers have assisted station programmes in testing cowpea varieties, evaluating the desirability of hilling groundnuts, ascertaining whether the Dutch hoe can help with the weeding operation, and so forth.
This type of testing in FSD is not analogous to typical technical transfer. Rather than testing fully finished products, FSD assists technology generating programmes, usually based on research stations. Often, the types of technology tested in this manner have not been identified as having high leverage power in the system (see Section 6.4.1). Leverage power refers to the ability of a technology change to have a major impact on the performance of the farming system. However, these technologies do fit possible needs and asking farmers to participate in their development is worthwhile, It is desirable to test technologies as early as possible in their development, This is to facilitate making modifications and to minimize waste of research resources. It also may accelerate the dissemination of suitable technology, Such technology, even if not fully appropriate, may sometimes stimulate thinking among farmers if they are not accustomed to these types of interventions. Feedback in these instances can contribute to new innovations in technology generation.
BOX 3.2: FSD WITH A 'PRE-DETERMINED FOCUS' ON A SUBJECT
A great deal of FSD work, particularly in its earlier years, was not focused on testing specific technology as much as a pre-determined focus on a subject matter area. FSD within the CGIAR institutions such as IRRI, CIMMYT, and ICRISAT have focused on issues related to production of their respective commodity crops. ILCA focused on issues in livestock production, ICRAF in agroforestry' etc. Some FSD teams within the national agricultural research systems (NARS) also worked under limited mandates to deal with particular enterprises; commodities; or other subject areas (e.g., soil water management). The judgements of farmers, the end-users of products developed by these organizations, were foremost in these FSD activities. However, the parent institution with its technologygeneration activities would be a primary client in these instances.
BOX 3.3: FSD WITH A 'WHOLE-FARM PROBLEM PERSPECTIVE, OR 'FSD IN THE SMALL'
An FSD interdisciplinary team conducted a diagnostic survey (see Section 8.4.3) and determined that labour for satisfactory weed control in field crops is a major constraint to farm production and farm family well-being. The survey also showed that due to population pressures, farmers were no longer able to shift field sites as in the past and that deteriorating soil fertility also was becoming a major issue. However, during the course of farmers participating in testing possible solutions to these problems, discussions between the FSD team and farmers identified the potential for intensified poultry production as an additional means of improving farm income. This resulted, in addition, in collaborative testing in the area of intensive poultry production and, as a result, exemplifies FSD with a 'whole-farm problem perspective.'
The major breakthrough that has occurred is through supplementing the rapid rural appraisal (RRA) techniques, which have been available for some time. with the participatory rural appraisal (PRA) techniques (i.e., see Chapter X), which have developed rapidly in recent years.
To date, the first two approaches listed above have been used. Although FSD 'in the small' arrives at a focus within the system in the course of diagnosis, FSD 'with . pre determined focus' moves into the system to research an enterprise or one facet of an enterprise looking for improvements within that focus that are compatible with the whole farming system.
BOX 3.4: FSD WITH A 'NATURAL-RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FOCUS.
A non-governmental organization (NGO) has adopted, as one of its aims, the conservation of the natural resource base within areas of agricultural production. This NGO sponsors FSD activities in a village in which participating farmers look at current and prospective problems in natural resource conservation and management. They evaluate potential solutions to these problems at the same time issues in agricultural production and family income are considered.
The FSD team from the NGO and farmer participants discovered a number of incongruencies between issues of conservation and present day agricultural production. They included the following:
Integrating these apparently opposing sets of objectives for natural resource conservation and production poses a major challenge for FSD. Participating farmers recognize many of the conservation issues and trends and some express concern for the future. In some cases, traditional techniques for conservation such as gully amelioration have been identified and are being promoted, but other issues remain unresolved. Some of the constraints encountered today or anticipated in the future were unknown to farmers in the past. Solutions therefore, are not known, and innovative and problem-solving thinking is required. However, given farmers' intimate knowledge of their current and past production environment, their input in designing appropriate strategies for the future based on an analysis of what has happened in the past is indispensable. This is clearly a fertile area for active collaboration between on-farm and on-station work: a give and take between farmers, scientists, and policy makers.
Some of the major characteristics of FSD are as follows:
- Necessary conditions determine whether the farming family would be able to adopt the improved practices. Such conditions include technical feasibility, social acceptability, and compatibility with external institutions -- that is, support systems.
- Sufficient conditions determine whether the farmer would be willing to adopt the improved practices. Obviously, the necessary conditions will be influential in determining this willingness. Sufficient conditions include the compatibility of the improved practices with the goal(s) (e.g., food self-sufficiency, profit maximization, risk minimization, etc.) of the farming family; the resources they have access to; and the farming system they now practice.
- To look at recognized farming systems and the stock of materials and techniques accumulated from station-based research, so as to be able to choose technical solutions to problems that have been identified, On-farm experimentation then adapts chosen solutions to the local situation. This is a mobilizing and adaptive role, shaping the product for an identified market.
- To pass back unsolved technical problems, important to the system, to the appropriate commodity research team on the experiment station, This role is one of identifying and helping to prioritize the agenda for technical research.
- To link with farmer clients and extension staff in local farm situations, drawing both farmers and extension workers and other relevant 'actors' into the technology-generation process.
Two examples indicating the perils of not exploiting the complementarily between onfarm and station-based research are given in Boxes 3.6 and 3,7. Similar linkages could be established with planning and development agencies concerning proposed policy/support programme changes. Unfortunately, these are not yet strongly developed in most countries.
BOX 3.5: FSD WITH A 'LIVELIHOOD-SYSTEMS FOCUS'
There are, to date, relatively few good examples of applying FSD with a 'livelihood systems focus.' One organization that in recent years has expended considerable effort in integrating 'off farm' with 'on-farm' activities in a sustainable manner has been ICLARM which has concentrated on integrating aquaculture with crops and livestock [Lightfoot and Noble, 1992].
Certainly integration of 'on-farm' and 'non-farm' activities deserve much greater emphasis than it has to date, especially as increasing pressures develop on the natural resource base. 'Non-farm' activities car provide an outlet for surplus labour and contribute to the attainment of sustainable livelihoods. In many areas (e.g., semi-arid parts of West Africa), particularly where agricultural activities are seasonal in nature, farmers have always recognized the complementarily between farm and non-farm activities, through emphasizing the latter particularly during slack periods in the agricultural cycle [Norman et al, 1981], Many of these jobs are in the non-formal sector and involve micro-enterprises [Liedholm and Chuta, 1976; Liedholm and Mead, 1993], also an area that needs much greater emphasis than it has to date.
BOX 3.6: TECHNOLOGY THAT WORKS UNDER EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS WILL NOT ALWAYS BE RELEVANT ON-FARM
In Botswana, precipitation is low and variable, creating erratic conditions for crop production. Under these conditions, farmers minimize risk by adopting an extensive low-input cropping system that is moderately productive under favourable conditions but minimizes losses when rainfall fails. Under research-station management, an intensive system for maize increased average yields and dramatically improved yield stability. The intensive system consisted of controlled pathways for planting with minimal tillage of the soil and water concentration onto the plant zone. It is the water concentration that stabilizes maize yields. Weed control was as used needed but weed pressures were minimal when crops were established early.
This technology failed when it was tested under farmer management. It failed because critical resources are not available on the farm at the right time to meet the schedule requirements of the new technology. The intensive system requires that soil preparation be finished before the rainy season begins and that planting be carried out on the first rain(s) of the year. Meanwhile, draught animals to do this work are kept near watering points at distant cattle posts until rains have filled shallow wells and ponds near the herds. Farmers and their draught animals cannot plant early in the season, and when they do not, weed growth overruns the controlled pathways. The Ministry of Agriculture made a fitting decision to conduct farmer-managed tests before recommending this system to farmers based on station results alone.
Is this the only choice? It might be popular to think in terms of the one or the other; systems, approaches or reductionism, each with its characteristics and methodology. Should one 'divide and conquer' or accept that 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts"? A distinction is made between science and art but also it is reflected in divergent schools of thinking within some disciplines. However, in FSD, this rigid dichotomy of perspective is neither necessary or feasible.
FSD recognizes that farming systems are highly complex and not fully reducible. They are too complex for human intuition to deal with all the factors involved but, at the same time, consist of such a fuzzy web of interactions that currently available analytical tools are not powerful enough to describe them.
Over the years, science in agriculture has attempted to model the factors and relationships within a farm operating in an agro-ecological situation. The purpose of this modelling invariably has been to engineer optimal solutions or strategies. An important limitation to this approach is that optimization has been for the research model and not for the farm and the farming family itself. A larger purposeful framework comprising a farm value system and related decision making patterns cannot be incorporated so readily into this research model.
FSD seeks to synthesize human intuition and judgement with analytical science. To accomplish this, FSD uses farmer perspectives on issues, problems, etc. Even when these are not completely exact, they help create holistic or logical frameworks within which technical aIternatives can be screened or engineered. FSD also seeks to render the holistic framework as explicit as possible. Farmers and FSD staff seek to differentiate uncertainty in the system that is due to randomness (i.e., rainfall probabilities) from that due to lack of experience (i.e., ignorance about new technology) from that due to vagueness (i.e., typically, decision making patterns). By integrating relevant scientific information, hands-on experiences, and intuitive managerial skills, FSD can be effective in evaluating scenarios, even those involving future changes in the farming environment.
Within this framework, numerous scientific information needs will be recognized. Within this framework, the need is to obtain rather unequivocal answers to the specific and well defined questions. Reductionist's techniques are better suited for this purpose, especially if the question pertains to objects in the system rather than human behaviour, which involves human intuition skills. The key to successfully designing this type of focused research is the incorporation of different perspectives through interdisciplinary teamwork and participation of farmer managers.
Thus, 'rigour versus relevancy' need not be a dilemma in FSD, On the contrary, rigour and relevancy are both possible and essential, if solutions are to be found in time for the many pressing problems that confront farming systems in a rapidly changing world.
The systems analysis employed in FSD should do the following:
Thus, there is a complementarity between the reductionist and systems approaches. This is why it was argued earlier that the FSD approach is complementary to station-based research, which usually employs a reductionist approach. The holistic approach in FSD is needed to ensure that experiment stations develop relevant technologies and needs to exploit the power of the reductionist approach, which can be a very efficient way of developing new technologies, once the priorities have been ascertained correctly. The results of this potentially relevant technological work can then be given to the FSD team for on-farm evaluation.
BOX 3.7:'APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY' WILL NOT ALWAYS BE RELEVANT ON-FARM
Appropriate technology is characterized as low cost, technologically simple, labour intensive, making use of local materials and existing methods of production, and responding to identified constraints in the farming system. FSD generally seeks technologically appropriate solutions to problems but these should not be promoted automatically without on-farm assessments.
The Bolivian altiplano is a hostile environment for agricultural production. The zone is dry and cold with nightly frosts occurring at any time of year. In earlier periods, farmers of this area traded products of their system for various food products of the lowlands. In recent times, their access to other markets has partially been broken off. Land degradation and pressures on use of the land have further reduced the ability of farmers to maintain their traditional crop and livestock production strategies.
Protected horticultural systems were identified by several NGOs as appropriate ways to solve problems in this system [Kohl, 1991]. For the most part, these systems were promoted directly without an objective assessment including testing under farmers' conditions. Initial glasshouses were soon found to have difficulties with high insolation costs and were replaced by adobe structures covered with plastic. But many other problems were not addressed or proved unsolvable: guaranteed water supplies, local and distant markets for excess production, nutritional benefits of products, and so forth.
An important finding of a study of this large and costly effort is that promoters of development have not taken experimentation seriously enough. The value of farmer and expert involvement in design, testing, and dissemination is that irrelevant or incorrect designs and management systems can be screened out or corrected.
Work relating to FSD might be incorporated as a working tool for several different types of institutions. These could include such diverse institutions as agricultural research, extension, community development (particularly in regards to NGOs), or even ministerial or national units interested in policy design and assessment.
FSD thus can he used to focus on family income. technology design, dissemination, and adoption: or designing solutions to the problems associated with a deteriorating natural resource base in agricultural areas. At another level of viewing the institutional setting of FSD, it is apparent that not only some disciplines but also various technical and sociological approaches and methods, are evolving to better deal with systems analysis. Take, for examples, the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a tool integrating large amounts of data into a single framework useful for technical as well as sociological and economic analyses. On the other hand, community development and policy reform programmes use increasingly sophisticated techniques (i.e., tools or methods) that contribute to decentralized planning, grass-roots participation, and empowerment in assessing problems and designing solutions.
The emphasis in many areas is on developing integrated approaches and system type analytical methods. With the possibility of increasing convergence occurring in some of the methods and, in some cases, objectives, the unique contributions by FSD will be brought into question by some. And, in fact, the institutional role or mandate of FSD will vary. FSD in one setting may focus Iargely on trials and farmer testing of new technology. In another setting, a greater emphasis may be placed on surveys, sociological or information related to the financial picture of the whole farm, and so forth, In the larger picture, none of this matters too much. But it should be remembered that FSD does have certain fundamental characteristics (See Sections 3.2 and 3,4). These include:
FSD also must focus on appropriate linkages with other development support programs and institutions (for example, see Section 2.4). In this regard, FSD emphasizes a strongly integrative and integrating philosophy, not just for disciplinary and farming perspectives within FSD itself; hut integrating strengths of personnel, resources, information, and location of the FSD programme with other research and development programmes working in the same area or domain. A critical element of this inter-institutional integration is a logical division of labour for the problem-solving task, This invariably will encourage collaboration in the development of work plans both for short-term as well as medium- and long-term objectives.
