1. AQUACULTURE AND THE SMALL-SCALE FARMER
2. THE RESEARCH-EXTENSION-FARMER CONTINUUM
3. A NEW EXTENSION-RESEARCH RELATIONSHIP
4. INFORMATION AND APPROPRIATE RESEARCH
5. AQUACULTURE RESEARCH CAPABILITIES
REFERENCES *
1.1 The Context of Rural Aquaculture
1.2 What Constrains the Adoption of Aquaculture by Small-Scale Farmers?
Rural small-scale farmers carry out their farming activities in a complex physical and socio-economic environment, the elements of which have been addressed in the context of rural aquaculture by other thematic papers at this consultation. Research and extension provide methods and tools for understanding this environment, developing improved farming technologies and promoting their adoption by farmers.
Whether a farmer adopts a given farming activity depends on three broad factors: knowledge of the farming technology, access to the means of production required by this technology, and the motivation to adopt based on a perception of an overall benefit if the technology is applied to the available means. In the setting of the rural small-scale farmer, none of these closely inter-related factors is simple, yet they must be reduced to researchable elements if new technologies are to be developed and promoted for adoption.
Aquaculture is a relatively new farming activity in many developing countries. Even in those areas where aquaculture has been practiced for centuries, it has only recently be subject to rigorous scientific research and technological development. These efforts have not always been successful, for reasons relating to technical, socio-economic, policy and institutional aspects of aquaculture (FAO/NORAD/UNDP 1984; Harrison et al 1994). Besides the lack of adoption by farmers, there has not been a reasonable return on the large amount of development assistance which has been applied to the aquaculture sector.
However, contrary to the prevailing opinion among many development professionals (e.g., Cross 1991; Lazard et al. 1991), the development and extension of aquaculture techniques to small-scale farmers has not been a total failure. The sustained adoption and spread of small-scale fish farming has in many cases been quite remarkable:
· In Rwanda, the National Fish Culture Project rehabilitated 1,061 ponds, built 661 new ponds and increased fish production by 425% over a five-year period from 1983 (Nathanaël and Moehl 1989). The gains made were sustained for at least eight years (Molnar et al. 1991).· From 1982 through 1989 more than 1,200 ponds were built or rehabilitated in Guatemala, producing approximately 100 tons of fish annually and growing at a rate of 15% per annum (Castillo et al. 1992).
· In a single year (1991), extension efforts in Bangladesh sustainably transferred Puntius gonionotus culture to 91% of the 1,725 small-scale farmers approached in the target area (Gupta and Rab 1994).
· Aquaculture in Eastern Province, Zambia grew from 12 functioning fish ponds in 1987 to 649 in 1992 to 1164 in 1995 with support from combined agriculture/aquaculture extension agents (Chimfwembe 1995; Ngenda 1995).
· Fish farming in the Southern Region of Malawi increased from 429 farms in 1988 to 1517 farms in 1995 with extension focusing on group and mass-media techniques (Scholz and Chimatiro 1995).
· Fingerling demand by Malagasy carp farmers rose from 100,000 in 1985 to almost 1.5 million in 1992 during a period when extension focused on training and strengthening private fingerling producers (van den Berg 1994).
· Over five years, from 1991 to 1995, the number offish ponds in the Arusha region of Tanzania increased from 678 to 1,100 based on an extension strategy of providing no external inputs other than advice provided by local volunteers trained by an NGO (Murnyak and Mafwenga 1995).
Most of these achievements have involved externally-funded projects and. while having significant impact on farmers in the project areas, the approaches used have not always been economically sustainable by farmers (Harrison 1994a; Vincke 1995). Even when the technology package could have been sustained on the farm, the extension approach was seldom sustainably adopted by the national extension services (Coche et al. 1994). Growth in production and adoption rates have therefore tended to stagnate as soon as the project ends (OECD 1989). At the national level, the growth in fish production has not been as large as was predicted and has failed to keep up with the growing population (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The role of projects in encouraging sustained adoption of aquaculture technology
The experience of the many projects, however, demonstrates that aquaculture can be a viable enterprise for small-scale producers and that gains in economic and food security goals can be achieved at reasonable cost (Kapetsky 1995; Kent 1995). In addition, the various aquaculture development and extension projects have accumulated a wide range of experiences and substantially strengthened the knowledge base upon which more progressive and efficacious rural development strategies can be founded (Harrison 1994a). The task at hand is to synthesize what has been learned about small-scale aquaculture in order to improve the development of policy, technology, extension and institutional support. The new knowledge can be used as input to modify the national research and extension services so that they function effectively to meet the needs of small-scale farmers.
To develop a more effective research and extension approach to fish farming development, we must first understand what has limited the success of previous approaches, which have focused on a narrow measure of economic viability offish farming technologies. Although the economic viability of small-scale aquaculture has been repeatedly demonstrated at a variety of intensities (Popma et al. 1984; Hatch and Hanson 1992; Lightfoot et al. 1992), many farmers ignore not only aquaculture, but a wide range of agricultural innovations regardless of their profitability (Gomez 1994; Nxumalo 1995), indicating that there must be more to the farmer's decision-making than simple economics (Harrison 1994a; Harrison et al. 1994).
Evidence from farmer-participatory extension and research projects indicates that smallholders view their farms as personalized and often chaotic conglomerations rather than as systematic collections of discreet enterprises (c.f. Scoones and Thompson 1994) for which farmers often lack mental tools for holistic interpretation (Lightfoot and Minnick 1991). These conglomerations are interconnected in various and complex ways with external systems such as the household and the surrounding community (Molnar et al. 1991; Harrison 1994b). The success or failure of an individual enterprise is not infrequently attributed to supernatural causes (Grover et al. 1980; Rist 1995). While some farm enterprises are managed systematically (not necessarily scientifically) and are amenable to farmer experimentation, improvement and economic analysis (Stolzenbach 1994), others are managed according to tradition, regardless of how scientists might evaluate their economic viability (Castillo et al. 1992; World Bank et al 1992; Vel 1995).
The vast majority of aquaculture research and development exercises have been designed around the incorrect assumption that small-scale farmers evaluate the incorporation of a fish pond into their farm in isolation from other options and fanning activities. Small-scale farms are, however, not simple systems which are easily amenable to economic description. Most farmers weigh a wide variety of variables when deciding whether or not to adopt a new technology (Gupta 1992; Wijkstrom 1992). Men and women weigh different variables differently at different times (Ademola 1994). Getting aquaculture onto a farm is thus not simply a matter of demonstrating its technical or economic viability (Brummett and Noble 1995a). As a minimum, the technology must be dramatically more productive (and possibly profitable, depending upon the goals of the farmer) than currently applied methods and must be fairly easy to incorporate into the existing farm system (Figure 2). Studies in Asia have shown that farmers will only adopt new farming approaches if they are at least 30% better than traditional practices (Gomez, 1994). Chikafumbwa (1994) found that Malawian rice or fish farmers were much more likely to adopt integrated rice-fish farming than were farmers who knew neither technology.
Using qualitative choice modeling, Poison and Spencer (1991) identified farm size, age of household head, farm income, migrant status of the farming household, and land ownership as important farm characteristics which influence the adoption of new cassava varieties in Nigeria. All of the farmers in their study were well-aware of the benefits of the new variety, but many still decided not to adopt.
Small-scale farms are not only internally complex. They are also highly variable over space and time, both agroecologically and socioculturally (Mandima 1995). This variability can have a major impact on the up-take of technology. Poison and Spencer (1991) cite work in Nigeria which found that adoption rates of new cassava varieties among adjacent fanning communities, with similar social structures, cultures and land types, ranged between 5 and 80%. This implies that there is a important idiosyncratic component to small-scale farming systems evolution. While findings of this type, and those described above, may not surprise field workers, the complex reality of small-scale farming systems is too seldom considered when research and development is being planned (Cross 1991).
Technological innovations which solve farmers' real problems and are not simply ends in themselves must be designed around a clear understanding of the problem they are meant to resolve. For this to occur, researchers must learn how small-scale farming systems function and relate to their surrounding environment before beginning a program of research (Mandima 1995).
Researchers too often work at intellectual levels and reside in physical locations which are difficult for farmers to access directly (Chambers 1986). Education levels of farmers and the research community are often very different. Researchers tend to be housed in universities or research centers which are generally located in or near cities and thus are not likely to encounter many farmers in their daily transactions. When farmers do appear on campus, they are often brought there in the role of receivers, rather than disseminators, of information.
Traditionally, the extension service has been given the task of acting as an intermediary between researchers and the farming community (Figure 3). The extension agent is supposed to go out to the farm, collect information about both perceived and unperceived needs of farmers, and transmit it to scientists. The scientists are then supposed to design appropriate solutions and give them to extension agents who are supposed to pass them along to the farmers (Elwell 1992; MacKay 1992).
Figure 3: The Research-Extension-Farmer continuum as it currently exists in many developing countries
The system seldom works as designed (INTERPAKS 1984; Bunting 1986). Extension often fails to accurately perceive the situation of the farmers and transmits to researchers misinformation or none at all. Researchers consequently drift off course and begin concentrating on topics which they find personally interesting, but for which there may be no practical application in small-scale farming systems. When findings generated under such circumstances are transmitted to extension agents, they are out of context and thus seldom properly understood. In the end, the farmers receive either no advice, advice for which they have no use, or advice which, since it was only partially understood by the extension agent, is incomplete and difficult to apply.
The fault for the breakdown is both functional and structural (Coche et al. 1994). Training for aquaculture extension agents is often inadequate preparation for what is arguably the most difficult aspect of technology development and transfer (Haight 1995). Aquaculture extension agents are typically trained in only the most basic aspects of the technology they are expected to disseminate. They seldom understand the underlying principles of aquaculture and consequently lack the flexibility they need to fit fish farming into the highly personalized farming systems described above (Brummett 1994a; van der Mheen 1996). Consequently, although information does flow to farmers (Figure 3), the quality of this information is not always very high (INTERPAKS 1984). The farmers perceive this and, more often than not, wisely refuse to adopt it.
Extension agents only rarely receive training in the interpersonal and communication skills which are essential for the efficient transmission of information between persons of different education levels (Harrison et al. 1994). Being government officers and having received at least some secondary education, extension agents often scorn the rural people who they are supposed to help (Weeks 1990), an attitude which is usually self-apparent enough to engender in the farmers a reciprocal sentiment (Mutsekwa 1995). If this attitude problem is compounded by an extension agent's having attempted to pass on (and in some situations having actually forced farmers to accept through fines or other punitive measures) what the farming community regards as obviously bad advice, the likelihood that useful information will flow from farmers to extension agents and thence to research is substantially diminished (Cox 1986).
Extension in most developing countries is the entry-level function in government departments dealing with small-scale farming development, including aquaculture (Figure 4). Since high quality human resources are usually in short supply, there is a high degree of upward mobility in government services (Cox 1986). Hence, extension personnel who perform well and have superior capabilities are quickly removed from the field, given additional training, and end up working in laboratories or behind desks. Left in the extension services are inexperienced young people and older people who were judged by their superiors as unsuitable for promotion. To make matters worse, these more senior extension agents often hold the posts which regulate the younger and junior staff, thus ensuring that any new ideas and approaches which improved training might have encouraged in the new generation will receive a chilly reception.
Figure 4: The relative positions of administration, research and extension in many bureaucracies
Government services in developing countries often suffer from inadequate funding. It is not surprising that extension, which is often viewed as a low-level job, also receives minimal financial support. Furthermore, the payback from such dispersed activities as small-scale aquaculture is difficult to document (see Theme 1). Transportation, facilities and essential equipment for data collection and analysis are expensive and thus often in short supply, and salaries are often not sufficient to cover the cost of living for staff. Couple this with inadequate training, and it should be no surprise that the information collection and transmission capabilities of the majority of extension agents is less than what it should be.
In the traditional research-extension-farmer continuum (Figure 3), whatever information extension agents manage to collect must be transmitted to research if problems are to be scientifically investigated and resolved. Unfortunately, extension and research are often housed separately, often in entirely different government departments and hence seldom interact with each other. Extension agents are not invited to research meetings and vice versa. Researchers tend to scorn the more poorly educated extension agents, just as the extension agents scorn the farmers. None of these conditions creates an atmosphere conducive to the flow in information.
While it is generally acknowledged that high quality information is not flowing (INTERPAKS 1984), no one cares to take responsibility for making sure that the situation is corrected. Each side of the extension-research linkage tends to blame the other for not getting the job done. Extension agents accuse researchers of living in ivory towers and being more interested in publishing arcane research in obscure journals than dealing with the messy realities of rural development (Oram et al. 1979). Researchers insist that the information which they receive from extension agents is inadequate, and when solutions are proposed they are not properly conveyed to the farmers.
In the traditional view depicted in Figure 3, extension is clearly the key to information flow both to and from researchers and farmers. Extension agents are expected to be half scientist and half farmer, able to pick up and understand a technical journal article, put it into the specific context of his or her target community, and then communicate the information effectively to practical-minded farmers who have limited formal education. To make the system function as designed, the human and physical resources allocated to the extension services must be substantially improved over what they are today. Extension agents must be adequately trained and supported in their work (van der Mheen 1996). The institutional framework in which field work is viewed as unprestigious and a sump for unproductive or junior staff must be revised to give high quality extension professionals the opportunity for personal advancement while keeping them in productive contact with farming communities. This will be enhanced by being able to document the positive contribution of aquaculture to farmers' livelihoods.
How these tasks are to be accomplished in light of the developing world's current level of indebtedness and the donor community's increasing frustration is not easy to predict. The alarming rate of impoverishment and environmental destruction in many of the developing countries necessitates that action to improve the lot of rural communities be taken quickly (McCalla 1994). Even if the money to revamp the extension services were made available today, it will still be extremely difficult to see how substantial gains could be made in a short enough period of time to be meaningful for the current generation, and the longer we wait, the worse the problem becomes.
Training and institutional reform of the extension services are, of course, absolutely essential for the long term growth and viability of agriculture in developing countries, but short term solutions are also needed. Since the bulk of quality education has been provided to the research side of the research-extension equation, it seems reasonable to shift some responsibility in that direction in order to meet short-term objectives. If our short-term solutions work, it may well preclude the need for the old structure entirely and pave the way for a completely new approach to technology development and transfer.
Although extension agents in developing countries are nowhere plentiful, they are everywhere vastly more numerous than researchers. Short-circuiting the researcher-extension-farmer continuum to preclude extension, while possibly improving the flow of information in the specific target areas in which a researcher happened to be working, would actually reduce the total amount of information reaching the rural areas. In addition, the fact that most researchers live, study and teach in or near cities would shift the focus of outreach towards the urban centers and further marginalize remoter regions.
Researchers must, however, take the lead in interpreting research results and developing extension messages. Since most researchers are skilled at the former but have only a vague idea about how to approach the latter (AIT Aquaculture 1994), the context for a closer research-extension relationship is established. Farmers' problems identified by extension should be communicated directly to researchers (Dioné and Bedingar 1995). (Tools for problems identification, such as PRA and RRA, are considered under Themes 1 and 2). Available data pertinent to that particular problem can then be processed, tabulated and condensed by the researcher into a solution comprehensible to the extension agents. If a particular solution is unacceptable to extension, because it does not solve the farmers' problem or is not practical, then it should be examined jointly by both research and extension and an approach work out which is both understandable and scientifically accurate.
The venue for this research-extension dialogue will be different for different countries, cultures and bureaucracies. Joint staff meetings or representation by research at extension meetings and vice versa are possibilities. Conducting joint demonstrations to farmers has been used as a means of getting research and extension together (Noble and Rashidi 1990). Another mechanism which might be useful is to have researchers and extension personnel conduct joint experiments. Such research projects would not only bring scientists and extension staff into contact with each other. It would have the added benefit of encouraging extension agents to study the underlying principles of aquaculture in a controlled fashion.
It would remain the responsibility of the extension agents to reprocess the materials given them by researchers into forms which suit whichever extension methodologies they are utilizing and disseminate them as widely as possible. Since the normal reason given by extension agents for the failure of their particular technology to be widely adopted by farmers is that the message provided by research was inadequate or inappropriate, obliging the agents to agree in consultation with researchers that the message is clear and to the point will permit the critical analysis of the extension methodology independently of the technology itself 1. Needs for training in extension approaches and communication skills could be more accurately identified. In addition, the job performance of researchers could be at least partly evaluated on the basis of their success in transferring information to extension and not so exclusively on their scientific publications (AIT Aquaculture 1994; Christensen 1994).
1 The efficacy of various extension approaches and methodologies is the subject of other background papers.
Consultation with extension agents would also provide researchers with valuable insights into the problems and constraints faced by both farmers and extension. Although imperfect to the extent that the ability of extension to correctly interpret the rural situation is imperfect, such input would represent a considerable improvement over the present situation (Noble and Costa-Pierce 1992). The establishment of a direct relationship between farmers and researchers for purposes of problem identification would complete the flow of information.
4.1 Relevancy and Quality of Information
4.2 Systems-Level Analysis
4.3 Farmer-Participatory Research
Redefining the relative roles of extension and research in technology packaging may help improve the relevancy and quality of information proceeding from research institutions through extension to farmers. Much of what is currently known about small-scale aquaculture, but which has been languishing in libraries for lack of an extension agent who could deliver them to farmers, might be rapidly moved onto the farm in this way. However, it still remains to get information about what's really happening in rural communities into the laboratory if technologies are to be developed which are truly useful to farmers.
And new technologies are desperately needed (Schultz 1986). Since it was largely based on the erroneous assumption that aquaculture innovation could be evaluated independently of other farm activities, most aquaculture research has been aimed at the fishpond in isolation (Huisman 1990). While such research is perfectly valid for commercial fish-only agrobusinesses (Bailey and Skladany 1989), there is little demand for the data it generates among resource-poor, small-scale farmers who employ mixed-cropping systems (Githinji and Perrings 1993) and eat more of their produce than they sell for cash (Castillo et al. 1992; Gupta et al. 1992; Brummett and Chikafumbwa 1995).
For example, a great deal of research effort has gone into the investigation of inorganic fertilizer use in small-scale fish fanning and practically no fish farmers ever use inorganic fertilizers. While eminently justifiable in economic and productivity terms the applicability of such technology when put into the context of the small-scale farmer is highly questionable. Consider that for the majority of small-scale fanning communities:
· inorganic fertilizers have always been scarce (Izac and Swift 1994) and their availability is actually declining (Coulibaly and Sanders 1995; Masters and Sanders 1995);· many members lack access to credit and thus cannot afford fertilizers even when they are available (Reardon et al. 1995);
· small-scale aquaculture is a secondary activity (Wijkstrom 1991) so any fertilizers which make their way onto the farm are used almost exclusively on the staple crop (Brummett 1994b).
There is nothing new in this list. If research has continued to develop new strategies for the application of inorganic fertilizers in small-scale fish fanning, it is only because the orientation of aquaculture scientists prevented them from knowing or caring that the raw materials for their technologies were not available to the proposed user group (OECD 1989).
In addition, much of the appropriate research which has been conducted has too often been repetitive and has contributed little to the knowledge base (AIT Aquaculture 1994). Chicken-fish integration, for example, has been studied in detail for almost 20 years (Hopkins and Cruz 1982) yet remains an active part of many developing country research programs (Coche et al. 1994). Such exercises have real value only as extension tools and training opportunities for extension agents and should be viewed as such and not deducted from already scanty research budgets (Brummett 1994c).
Researchers must get to work on finding realistic solutions to farmers' real problems (AIT Aquaculture 1994). To do this will require the intimate knowledge of small-scale farmers and their farming system which has been impossible to obtain under the traditional research-extension-farmer continuum approach (World Bank et al 1992). Scientists must get out of their laboratories and on to the farm (CIMMYT 1986).
Most science is conducted in a reductionist manner. That is, problems are broken down into their constituent sub-problems, each of which is independently analyzed. The bits are then reassembled. This is the essence of computer modeling and it works well for many sorts of systems. It does not work well for analyzing small-scale fanning systems in which the whole is always more than a sum of the constituent parts (Ruddle 1993).
Just going out to the farm does not mean that the scientist will immediately be able to overcome years of training in reductionism and actually see what is happening on the small-scale farm. New tools for holistically visualizing the farming system and introducing the farmer's perspective into the analysis must be learned (Goldsworthy et al. 1994a). While more complicated than the reductionist approach, scientists must acknowledge that a much broader range of factors than soil character, rainfall and seed genotype go into determining the productivity of a small-scale farmer's crop (Nilsson and Wetengere 1994).
A wide range of approaches to the problem of farming systems analysis have been tried (Cornwall et al 1994). The main feature of most of these is the participation of farmers in some sort of village or farm resource inventory. The generation of farming system maps (Figure 5) is a common tool. Farming system mapping exercises are conducted between scientists and individual farmers or groups of farmers and serve primarily as the basis for discussion about how the various components of the farming system and how they relate. Properly done, both scientists and farmers come away with a broader perspective of how the farm functions (Lightfoot et al. 1991; Lightfoot and Minnick 1991).
Farming system mapping exercises provide only the starting point from which research projects can be designed (Lightfoot and Pullin 1995). They are largely qualitative and not always easy to interpret. Subsidiary data collected during the course of the mapping exercise is often far more important than the map itself, but again, are difficult to analyze qualitatively (Noble 1994). Carefully structured interviews are often used to fill in gaps and collect more easily quantifiable social data (Wijkstrom and Aase 1989; Molnar et al. 1991; Mandima 1995).
The high degree of variability within and among farming communities must be considered when both designing and applying systems level research (Poison and Spencer 1991). In addition, farm analysis must also be made over a sufficiently long period of time to incorporate temporal variability (Ruddle 1993; Goldsworthy et al. 1994a; Izac and Swift 1994).
Farming systems analysis is still in its infancy and quantitative tools are few (Izac and Swift 1994). Many studies have been poorly controlled and/or reflect conditions on a very narrow range of farm over a very short time period and are hence not very useful for drawing general conclusions (Kessler and Moolhuijzen 1994). The Research Tools for Natural Resource Systems Monitoring and Evaluation (RESTORE) software developed by the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM) is one approach to the problem of converting mapping and interview data into quantitative experimental designs (ICLARM 1993). Land Use Systems Analysis (LUSA) developed by the Consortium for sustainable use of inland valleys in sub-Saharan Africa is another (van Duivenbooden 1995). Both of these tools use mapping, interview and measurement data (collected directly by scientists) gathered over time to generate a quantitative image of how farming systems function and evolve.
In many developing countries, aquaculture research is almost exclusively the domain of biologists and ecologists (Coche 1995). A key aspect of farming systems study is its necessarily multidisciplinary nature (Lightfoot et al. 1993). Since small-scale farms are closely adapted to both the sociocultural and agroecological environments (Rist 1995; Vel 1995) correct interpretation requires input from social, economic, anthropological, biological, ecological and agricultural scientists (Bunting 1986; Goldsworthy et al. 1994a). Although multidisciplinary approaches to problem-solving also have trouble producing quantifiable results, they are clearly important if the complex nature of small-scale farming systems is to be fully comprehended (Ranaweera et al. 1993).
Despite the shortage of quantitative methods in fanning systems analysis, the importance of the central idea remains: small-scale farming systems must be dealt with holistically if they are to be accurately understood (Ranaweera et al. 1993; Goldsworthy et al. 1994b). For research to be more widely adopted by small-scale farmers scientists need to find some way of incorporating an appreciation of these diverse systems into their experimental designs (Bunting 1986).
Scientists have long acknowledged the need to relate their findings to farm conditions. The common practice of setting up field trials is supposed to test experiment station results on cooperating farmer's fields. While logical from the point of view of scientists, these farm trials have one serious drawback: the conduct of the test relies on very little input from the farmers, either before or after the trial (Fagi and Suriapermana 1992). Farmers are given very clear instructions on how to conduct trials which were designed on the basis of laboratory experiments which, in turn, were based on a faulty understanding of the small-scale farmer's decision-making and resource allocation systems. When the results of these trials are analyzed, the almost universally lower production achieved by the farmer is attributed to the farmers lack of knowledge, the poor quality of farm soils, etc. It's unusual to hear anyone say of such trials that they didn't work well, because the technology being tested was not appropriate to the farmer's actual situation. The basic problem which limits the impact of research conducted exclusively on the experiment station influences the adoptability of farm trials: the scientist's perspective prevails at all levels (Chambers 1986). The farm is simply a temporary extension of the experiment station.
From field trials have evolved new methodologies for conceiving and conducting research in which the farmer's perspective is fully appreciated and farmers are incorporated into the research process from the very beginning. Some of these are highly political and/or based on philosophical principles and ideas which only secondarily deal with agricultural innovation. More valuable to our discussion are those farmer-participatory approaches which hope to capitalize on the strengths of modem science and traditional knowledge bases to move small-scale fanning systems in a direction which will enable them to adapt to the changing environmental and social circumstances of development (Reijntjes et al. 1992; Padilla 1993). Such methods have been discussed at length by Chambers et al. (1989) and Scoones and Thompson (1994). CIMMYT (1986) presented a generalized system for farming systems/participatory research and development which describes most of the key components (Figure 6). While all applications of this general model are slightly different, most begin with a systems approach and some sort of farm resource mapping exercise as described above. Another common element is that farmers provide input into the choice of research topics and the materials and methods to be used. This is generally done by presenting farmers with a range of possible technologies which he or she might find useful and then letting the farmer choose which best meets his or her needs (Stilwell 1995). After the experiment is finished, the researchers make a serious effort to relate the findings to farmers in terms the farmers understand (Hopkins 1988; Brummett and Noble 1995).
Letting the farmer choose is essential if the vast array of sociocultural constraints to the adoption of technology are to be successfully overcome (Schreiber and Hill 1993; van der Mheen-Sluijer 1995). Only the farmer can put the proposed new enterprise into proper Context within the farm and its surrounding environment. Since farms vary widely in their socioeconomic characteristics (Leelapatra et al. 1992; Mandima 1995) it is probably not possible to undertake a careful analysis of each farm in order to identify critical social and economic constraints. It is much more direct to let each farmer conduct his or her own personal analysis and then choose the technology which minimizes negative consequences of adoption (Cox 1986).
Once again, providing for scientific controls for many of these type of studies is difficult. Every small-scale farmer and farm is different and making generalizations is risky (CIMMYT 1986; Lazard 1992). Some researchers get around this problem by insisting that modem scientific protocols are not universal and controls and other accouterments of the scientific method are not necessarily needed (Rist 1995). Others are working to find creative ways to meet the rigorous demands of analytical science while not overly influencing the farmer's decisions and thus getting too far away from the basic principle of letting the farmer choose (Stilwell 1995),
One farmer-participatory research methodology which was developed specifically for small-scale aquaculture in sub-Saharan Africa is described by Brummett and Noble (1995b). In this approach, average values for inputs and management strategies employed by farmers are used to establish the control conditions for replicated experiment station trials. Whichever method is used, and a strict adherence to any particular method is probably not very useful anyway (Stilwell 1995), the basic concept of farmer-participatory research is that it forces the researcher to: 1) study the farm and the constraints faced by farmers in concert with farmers and, 2) look at technological innovation and farm management from the farmer's perspective (Leelapatra et al. 1992; Buadaeng and van Eckert 1993).
A general model for how the system proposed here might work has been successfully tested in Bangladesh by Gupta et al. (1992). Farmer participatory, on-farm and on-station research methods, including resource mapping exercises were used by scientists to develop a simple technology which was disseminated by extension staff from a local non-government organization (NGO) to 309 farmers. A follow-up survey found that 90% of the farmers had adopted the technology package and were planning on expanding the role of aquaculture on their farms (Gupta et al. 1992).
It is all well and good to discuss what researchers should do to improve the relevance of their scientific work to small-scale farmers; it is something else to actually do the work. Research in developing countries is hampered by many of the same constraints as extension (Bunting 1986; Christensen 1994; Coche et al. 1994). Education of researchers is focused on techniques and methodologies which are not always appropriate to their situation (Gaillard 1990). While numbers of scientists have risen over the last decade, overall funding by national programs has decreased, dramatically reducing the availability of funds per researcher (Pardey et al. 1995). Salaries and working conditions for scientists in developing country institutions are often substandard (World Bank et al. 1992). Teaching and administrative responsibilities distract university-based scientists from research (Schultz 1986). Aquaculture policy often emphasizes the study of systems and approaches which are not sensitive to the needs of the small-scale producer (Coche 1995). Scientists in developing countries are often young and have too little experience to overcome such problems on their own (Bunting 1986).
In the longer term, revitalization of the scientific establishment in developing countries is essential if these are to keep pace with the rapidly changing global economy (Spurling et al. 1992). Addressing the immediate needs of small-scale farmers is, however, not a highly capital-intensive activity. Researchers have in hand many of the basic technologies for use in the farmer-participatory research methodologies described above. The application and incremental modification of the available technology would generate new knowledge of interest to a wide variety of scientists and provide highly relevant information to farmers. Expensive equipment is seldom needed to do such work. Thus, in the short-term, directing research at the problems faced by small-scale farmers might actually help reduce the conflict between the desire to produce quality results and the imperatives imposed by shrinking budgets. It might also, in the longer term lead aquaculture research away from a focus on high-production/high pollution farming systems to those which might be more socially and environmentally sustainable (World Bank et al. 1992; Williams 1995).
* Apart from the layout, the references are as presented by the author
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Brummett, R.E. 1994a. Training in African aquaculture development. NAGA, the ICLARM Quarterly 17(2):4-6.
Brummett, R.E. 1994b. The context of smallholding integrated aquaculture in Malawi. In R.E. Brummett (ed), Aquaculture Policy Options for Integrated Resource Management in sub-Saharan Africa. ICLARM Conference Proceedings 46. International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management, Manila, Philippines and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), Eschborn, Germany.
Brummett, R.E. 1994c. How can research best serve the needs of aquaculture in Africa? NAGA, the ICLARM Quarterly 17(3): 15-17.
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