7. Participatory management and evaluation in community IPM

Community IPM requires an approach to management and evaluation that encourages congruence between ideas and approaches throughout the programme. The community IPM model encourages an adaptive management approach by farmers to engage with the complex systems in which they live and work in a sustainable way. The model is based on incremental, experiential learning and decision making at the community level. To support this model, continuous monitoring and feedback processes are required at the community level (Jiggins and Roling 1999). The model encourages multi-stakeholder participation and is focused on developing more sustainable relations between people and their environment. The community IPM model needs a management and evaluation system that encourages and supports the adaptive management approach. Farmers and facilitators must be part of the decisionmaking and evaluation activities that make up the management system supporting a community IPM programme. This chapter presents a discussion of participatory management and evaluation in the context of community IPM programmes.

7.1 Management

FFS alumni are developing their own village IPM programmes across Asia, from Nepal to Cambodia. The management context for community IPM needs to not only be flexible and responsive, but also ensure that decisions are made as close to the field level as possible. Alumni must have the opportunity to participate in the management system.

Alumni designing their local IPM programme

Michel Pimbert's analysis of agriculture biodiversity management paradigms provided the inspiration for the following matrix (Pimbert 1999). The matrix (Table 7.1) compares two management models based on a set of key institutional attitudes or patterns of behaviour. The first model is the conventional approach to management generally found among or aspired to by the centralized agriculture services developed during the Green Revolution. The second model describes a management system that can effectively support farmer-led community IPM field activities. This second model has been termed the community IPM model.

Table 7.1 Agro-ecological management models

A look at a few of the key attitudes and behaviours that constitute the comparison is revealing.

Starting point describes the philosophical perspective of a management system regarding the resources, natural or human, involved in an agro-ecological system. The conventional model takes an extractive perspective; resources are valued in terms of what they will yield or can be processed to yield on the market, national or international. Humans that are involved in the system are important only in so far as they can get product, in sufficient volume, to market. The community IPM model values natural resources and the humans involved in working with those resources. Rice has a culturally based value; people are not machines but impart value to all that they come in contact with. Thus, for example in Cambodia, community IPM activities are designed to provide opportunities for all in a village who are engaged in agriculture, including the children, disabled, illiterate and landless, to achieve their potential as human beings.

Key word describes the intention of the management model concerning the people and resources connected to an agro-ecological system. The conventional system intends to develop humans as objects to be manipulated so that resources can be extracted or processed for the market. The human factor in this system is neither intelligent nor endowed with the right to control what he or she does or owns. The community IPM model takes the position of empowering humans to control and decide about the processes and resources that they own. The community IPM approach includes regular forums for farmers to set strategies and plan activities which are then used as the basis for planning inter-regional and national programme activities as well as proposals for leveraging local support.

Locus of decision making refers to who is making the decisions and where they are located. Conventional systems are heavily centralized. Relatively few people are involved in taking decisions. These people are the senior professionals/bureaucrats who often have the added cachet of being expert. The community IPM model employs a decentralized approach to decision making. Consistent with a basic principle of community IPM, "farmers as experts", farmers are involved in the management process. In the countries involved in community IPM many opportunities are open to alumni and facilitators to engage in management activities. Farmers conduct participatory strategic planning exercises to develop goals, strategies and plans and take decisions regarding activities that they want to conduct to achieve their goals. Facilitators and farmer IPM trainers regularly hold management meetings together to decide about resource allocations to support field activities. In Viet Nam, farmer IPM trainers have participated in national-level community IPM planning sessions as well as in the designing of evaluation systems. In Indonesia the National IPM Farmers' Association and the community IPM team regularly meet to decide about allocation priorities, programme duration and specific activities.

Management focus describes the concerns of the system. The main concerns of the conventional approach are budgetary, deadlines and targets (e.g. numbers of farmers contacted, tons of rice harvested). The community IPM model is concerned about the quality of its activities. The model seeks to enhance the capacities of people, both those involved in the system and those touched by the activities conducted by facilitators and alumni. The community IPM model seeks sustainability. A concern of management within the community IPM model is that participants in the model continue to learn. Training is regularly available for FFS facilitators and farmer IPM trainers. Regular technical meetings are held for alumni to exchange information regarding field studies, village IPM programme development strategies and successful alumni-created farming innovations.

Error in the conventional model is either covered up, explained away or avoided by risk-averse decisions. The model shifts responsibility for mistaken decisions from the professionals who made them to the farmers who were the victims of the mistakes. In the community IPM model, mistakes are used as a basis for learning. If activities fail to achieve hoped-for results, the implementation of the activities is examined to determine whether changes can be made to improve a given situation or whether something entirely different needs to be done. Farmer and facilitator technical meetings often contain sessions that analyse farmer strategy or tactical problems in terms of: "What worked?" "What didn't work?" "Why?" "What can be improved?" "How can it be improved?" This analytical approach allows alumni and facilitators to openly examine shortcomings and discuss ways of overcoming them.

Outputs describes what the management system hopes to achieve. In the case of the conventional model, it is obvious that it hopes to be recognized for its professionalism, that targets are met. The model empowers the professionals within the system. As the system is risk averse, it becomes reactive rather than dynamic. The community IPM model seeks to empower rural populations by putting them in control of the resources that they own or jointly utilize and establish a system that is interactive or adapted to the existing ecological conditions.

In putting management systems together to support community IPM the key has been to build from the bottom up, starting at the local level. FFS facilitators, IPM field leaders and farmers have developed and managed complex community IPM programmes around the region. Planning and budgeting must become locally specific. For this, various strategies have been employed. In Indonesia, district IPM leaders, FFS facilitators and alumni developed activity plans and budgets based on local strategies that were aggregated into sub-regional plans. In Viet Nam, community IPM farmers and facilitators designed locally specific plans that were aggregated into provincial plans. In both countries the main management tasks were implemented locally: evaluation, administration, planning, budgeting, FFS implementation, building networks and human capital development were placed in the hands of farmers, facilitators and IPM field leaders. The result has been not only successful farmer-led village IPM programmes but also the development of highly skilled management teams.

7.2 Participatory evaluation

The purpose of evaluation in community IPM is to provide the leaders of these activities with the information that they need for their management decisions. The goals of evaluation within the context of FAO community IPM activities include:

• Providing alumni and IPM trainers with the opportunity to develop their evaluation skills so that they become better leaders/managers of community IPM activities at the local level.

• Providing the leadership of community IPM activities at all levels with the information they need to take effective decisions to enhance the impact of those activities.

• Providing alumni and others with information concerning the progress achieved by alumni in institutionalizing IPM at the local level.

Evaluation activities must be useful to farmers. The best way to ensure this is to give farmers a role and a share of control in each stage of any evaluation activity. As community IPM develops at the village level and farmers are conducting their own IPM activities, they need to have the tools to evaluate those activities to determine whether they are achieving their goals. Farmers need to be able to review what they have done in the context of their local conditions and take decisions regarding future activities.

Mapping farm and village conditions

If IPM field trainers have relevant evaluation skills, they can train farmers so that farmers can effectively evaluate their own local programmes. Community IPM programmes have depended upon both IPM field trainers and farmers for the implementation of evaluation studies. To successfully conduct any evaluation study both farmers and IPM trainers need to be able to:

• design an evaluation study;

• conduct direct field observations of IPM farmers' activities, fields and studies;

• lead focus group discussions with IPM alumni and others;

• lead open-ended interviews of farmers, officials, IPM field staff and pesticide dealers;

• collect secondary/corroborating data relating to activities, pesticide sales, health issues, etc;

• map farm and village conditions;

• apply the analytical frameworks discussed later in this chapter; and

• prepare appropriate reports based on the evaluation results.

Using a participatory approach that puts alumni in a position where they share control over the activity ensures that they learn about conducting evaluation studies and increases the likelihood that they will benefit and use the results from the exercise. Involving them in design decisions, study implementation, data analysis and report is essential.

Beside interviews with individuals, a wide variety of group participatory activities can be used to collect data. Group activities might include:

• Mapping the history of the development and spread of IPM activities in a community. A time line of critical events, activities, individuals, organizations, etc, can be identified through this activity. The activity can point out where and with whom follow-up interviews are needed.

• Mapping sites of FFSs, IPM groups, farmer IPM trainers, local leaders, field problems, sites of studies by alumni, etc, can also help to determine who might be able to provide further information other than the immediate group of alumni.

• Conducting extended field observations to determine the state of health of the agro-ecosystems in alumni fields can help to determine the benefits of IPM at the field level (this could be a comparative study) and provide a crosscheck on alumni-reported insecticide use.

• Studying the incidence of pesticide poisoning among alumni and non-alumni would help to determine the impact of IPM on people's health.

The following participatory evaluation activities are taken from a field guide for participatory evaluation activities. The field guide was developed and used in participatory evaluation studies in Indonesia in 1998 and 1999. The two activities are intended to help farmers and trainers identify IPM activities conducted in a community and farmers' perceptions of results and benefits from the activities. The goals of these activities are to: a) raise alumni's awareness of the history of local IPM-related activities and the outcomes of these activities; b) identify potential issues, people, activities, etc, for follow-up interviews by farmers and trainers. Participants in the activities included alumni and trainers.

Indonesian farmer IPM trainers and IPM field trainers have developed several approaches to collecting data related to changes in farmers' practices. One approach seeks to improve recall by using a group activity. The first step is to conduct individual interviews with IPM alumni in the field to determine pre- and post-FFS practices. A drawing of the stages of plant development is often used to help with recall. The next step is to check the data through group analysis and discussion of interview results. The following is a participatory evaluation activity that was developed and used in West Java, Indonesia. Farmers wanted to know how they were benefiting by applying IPM principles, how they could improve their practices and influence others to apply IPM.

7.3 Frameworks for analysis

Participatory evaluation of community IPM activities has generated a wide variety of data. The participatory activities presented above hint at some kinds of data that might be uncovered by an evaluation activity. Data will typically concern:

• Alumni-organized IPM farmer networks, their organization and the processes they use for sharing information about IPM;

• Groups that alumni organized or reactivated, their activities and the results of their activities;

• Alumni-conducted research studies, the results, how results have been shared with other farmers and how they have been shared;

• Alumni leadership and the processes enacted as part of group problem analysis and decision making;

• Profiles of IPM alumni, local government officials and others;

• Events involving IPM alumni or organized by alumni, their goals, processes and results;

• Emerging behavioural norms among alumni and others; and

• Farming practice changes by alumni because of participation in an FFS.

Three different frameworks have proven to be useful in the analysis of data to look at the benefits of community IPM at the individual and collective levels. These frameworks help in describing the extent to which farmers are successful in achieving their goals. The frameworks overlap somewhat and, depending on the requirements of the evaluation study, some facets of the frameworks may be more relevant for a given study than others. The three frameworks look at:

• Farmers' relationships with the fundamental aspects of their world. Farmers are engaged with their world through many relationships that can be categorized and analysed by looking at the extent to which farmers have gained control over or improved their position within those relationships.

• The extent to which farmers have been able to achieve social gains. The extent to which farmers have been able to develop their potential can be labelled as social gains that farmers have made because of community IPM and FFS alumni activities. The analysis of social gains will consider several types of conditions which, taken together, provide the basis for farmers to make the best use of their skills, knowledge and resources.^[1]

• The changes in economic returns to farmers because of their improved farm management. Alumni can be expected to have made changes in their farm management because of participation in an FFS. These changes might lead to changes in the returns that alumni receive from their farming activities. The analysis of changes in economic returns that accrue to farmers makes use of what is referred to as the partial budget.

7.3.1 Relationships

Farmers are part of a web of relationships that constitute their world. Key relationships related to the analysis of the benefits of community IPM at the village level include:

• Farmers and the agro-ecosystem;

• Farmers and farming;

• Farmers and money;

• Farmers and policy; and

• Farmers and other people.

Farmers and the agro-ecosystem: Farmers may take decisions to achieve a relationship in which they have greater control. They may be bound by myth into a relationship that places them in a position where they are mainly reactive to changing conditions. On the other hand, they may be free actors, aware of the range of options that exist or of their ability to create new options and the consequences of those options.

Farmers and farming: Farmers are in a relationship with their work. They may be passive recipients of technological packages, accepting what they are told regarding their farming practices. Or they may be farmers, because of their understanding of plant biology, agronomy and field ecology and of their ability to learn, test and adapt or reject inputs and ideas as they seek to employ economically and ecologically sustainable farming practices.

Farmers and money: Farmers tend to require credit assistance at specific times of the year. Their access to credit and the terms of that credit form the basis of this relationship. Farmers may be required to accept an in-kind credit package consisting of inputs that they don't need or they can act to change the shape of the credit package. The extent to which farmers can generate and manage resources to support their development would also be part of this relationship.

Farmers and policy: Local government policy, how officials implement policy and activities and whether farmers can act to influence policy are important elements in this relationship. Officials can follow policy, ignore it or use it to constrain farmers' freedom to make their own decisions as they manage their agro-ecosystems. Greater control over this relationship would include taking effective action against the misuse of policy or negotiating changes in inappropriate policy. Being able to change village policy regarding the use of village development funds to provide support to IPM activities would indicate a greater control over this relationship.

Farmers and other people: Farmers interact with a wide variety of people including other farmers, officials, their neighbours, and business people. Their attitudes toward these interactions are important. The changes in alumni attitudes as well as their changed status within these relationships form the basis for the analysis of this category of relationships.

An analysis of relationships should reveal whether and how these relationships have changed at the individual or at the collective level because of community IPM activities at the village level. Relevant issues to be considered are:

• Has there been a shift in control or power because of IPM activities?

• Have farmers changed their understanding of the terms of the relationship (hence a change in their ability to control the relationship)?

• If there has been a change, what has been the resulting benefit or loss to farmers?

7.3.2 Social gains

Another way of examining the benefits of community IPM would be to determine the social gains that have accrued to alumni and their villages because of it. These benefits indicate an increased level of empowerment that is shared among farmers. Farmers who are empowered can take or organize actions regarding their own, their families' and their communities' development. The conditions referred to here are several and grow out of the relationships that were discussed above.

• Access;

• Leverage;

• Choices;

• Status; and

• Critical reflection capacity.

Access: Access refers to the ability and capacity of farmers to obtain the resources they need on favourable terms. Access is gained when their ability to obtain access on favourable terms to the resources they need is either newly established or enhanced. Access implies that farmers are able to identify, analyse and design projects or actions to further enhance their opportunities. Further, farmers can sell these activities to those who control resources.

Leverage: This is farmers' bargaining strength to obtain the resources they need. Leverage is gained when farmers can successfully make claims on needed resources.

Choices: This concerns the ability of farmers to make decisions by choosing among available options. Positive benefits in this case would include both increased options and increased ability to take a critical decision regarding those options.

Status: Community IPM in a village should result in an improved self-image, increased self-confidence and a positive sense of identity. On the other hand, community IPM activities should result in local officials, non-members of IPM organizations and others conferring an enhanced status upon these organizations and their members. For example, FFS alumni are sought out as members for village development committees because of, among other reasons, their analytical and planning skills.

Critical thinking capacity: The ability to accurately assess competing options (perhaps recommendations regarding agronomic practices) based on experience and knowledge. This might be a planning activity where farmers identify a problem, set priorities, assess options and develop action plans

7.3.3 The partial budget analysis

Evaluation studies often try to determine what changes farmers have made in the farming practices because of participating in an FFS. Box 7.2 indicates that farmers are interested in knowing about these changes and their benefits. Farmers and trainers conducting participatory evaluation studies in Indonesia and Viet Nam collected data on practice change to examine the benefit of applying IPM in their fields. The IPM principles point to the changes in farming practices that alumni can be expected to make because of their participation in a field school. The IPM principles include:

• Grow a healthy crop. The application of good agronomic practices including the use of high-yielding varieties, appropriate planting distances and appropriate fertilization.

• The conservation of natural enemies. This suggests that there will be lowered rates of pesticide use.

• Conduct regular field observations. Alumni should regularly observe their fields to collect data regarding the agro-ecosystem for decisions that in turn influence the above two issues.

• Farmers become IPM experts. Alumni should be able to make informed decisions based on the results of their observations.

Data related to practice change can be assigned costs, and comparisons can be made between pre- and post-FFS practices related to economic benefits. The partial budget is a useful analytical tool in this context. Normally used as a planning tool, the partial budget examines changes made by farmers and the ensuing benefit of those changes on farmers' incomes. This is a straightforward analysis. The strength of the tool is that it provides a reliable indication of whether alumni benefit from the changes that they have made.

7.4 A cautionary note on participatory evaluation

There are many effective participatory evaluation methods. There are those practitioners who hold that the use of a given set of methods guarantees that a study will be participatory. The point is not to what degree farmers are active in a given study; it is rather to what degree farmers control decisions and play a role in the different stages of an evaluation study, including control over the data collected in a study. The most participatory of methods can be used in an oppressive manner. The most formal of academic research methods can be used in an emancipating manner.

There is a wide range of categories of participation. In a farmer training project for example, types of participation may range from farmers sitting in a room during a training (farmers are participating in a training) to farmers managing and implementing the training (farmers own the training). In participatory evaluation, the important question to ask is: who will own the data? If farmers collect data as part of a study but outsiders take over the data for their own purposes, the study has not been very participatory.

In community IPM, participatory evaluation has not been simply a methodological issue. Instead of asking what is the best participatory method for collecting a given category of data, the question has been one of how to put farmers in control of a method that will help them to collect the data that they need to answer their questions. In the first case farmers would be assured of being involved in an evaluation activity, in the second case they would be assured of owning both the evaluation approach and the data that was collected.