Operational Feasibility – A historic & Continuous Oversite Hindering Innovation Acceptance
While I think the innovation process to promote smallholder farmers for enhanced agrifood systems, assure food security for smallholder farm families, and contribute to national food security, does an excellent job of determining what is physically possible and perhaps highly desirable, I fear there is a major oversight in the process that severely limits the ultimate widespread acceptance of innovations across entire smallholder communities. That is, does the innovation process address the Operational Feasibility of innovations in terms of access to labor or mechanization to complete the innovations in sufficiently timely manner to take full advantage. Who in the agrifood innovation system is responsible to determine the operational resource in terms of the labor or mechanization needed to timely complete components of innovations, are those operational resources available, and if not, what are the rational compromises in adjusting the proposed innovations to the more limited operational capacity of individual smallholder farmers? How close would these rational compromises come to the current practices the innovations are trying to “correct”? Thus, are smallholder farmers really doing their best their limited resource will allow!! Does this analysis fall into an administrative void between the agronomists or other bio-scientists that develop and extend innovations and the social-scientists assisting smallholder communities? Is the historic but unfortunate assumption that this is not a problem, i.e. labor is infinitely available? Sorry but I fear it is a major problem. If smallholder farmers don’t have the operational resources to accept innovations, will we, as we have historically, done continue to badger farmers through various extension programs such as the current emphasis on Farmer Field School, pat ourselves on the back with the number of farmers we have trained, but ultimately see limited acceptance of our innovations, but attribute this to poor education or lack of motivation. Is anyone even conceptualizing the amount of labor required, availability of that labor and necessity of mechanization for smallholder communities? If we don’t address this issue I question the sincerity of the agrifood system development.
Do we need to look at the horror story of dietary energy balance? Is this another overlooked issue which should have been addressed decades ago when we first acknowledged that smallholder farmers were poor and hungry but failed to factor that as a major hinderance to the acceptance of agronomic innovations? Unfortunately, there is surprisingly little data on dietary calories available to smallholder farmers. What little that is available indicates most smallholders have access to only about 2500 kcal/day when to undertake a full day of agronomic field work requires more than 4000 kcal/day. If you set aside 2000 kcal/day for basic metabolism it leaves only 500 kcal/day to energize field work, that usually requires a total of 300 kcal/hour. The result is most smallholder farmers can only put in a couple hours of diligent effort per day, perhaps paced over a couple more hours with lower diligence. Does this limited available calories justify the typical 8 weeks of basic crop establishment? How much is the potential yield diminished with an 8-week delay in crop establishment? Would that be greater than 50% yield decline? What does this delay in crop establishment do for most agronomic innovations, render them largely irrelevant? How much documentation do we have on the range of crop establishment or other crop management activities? How often is it assumed that basic crop establishment should take only a couple weeks and blame the farmer for being lazy if it takes longer? What does this stereotype of the lazy farmer loafing around the village in the afternoon while there is plenty of fieldwork to do and his family’s food security is at stake? Is he really lazy in need of motivation or hungry and exhausted in need of a hardy meal?
How often do our physically possible, socially desirable innovations to the agrifood system to promote more resilience, or environmental sustainability compel smallholder farmers to exert more caloric energy than they have access to? Thus, before we put too much effort on promoting innovations that are desirable but not operationally feasible should we take time to enhance the operational capacity of smallholder communities so they can establish their crops in a timelier manner that would allow them to more widely accept the innovations developed for their benefit.
Enhancing operational capacity quickly implies access to mechanization, particularly for high drudgery basic land preparation. This could be through individually owned rice power tillers for paddy production as has become the common practice throughout most of paddy Asia starting some 50 years ago, or access to contract private owner/operator 65 hp 4-wheel tractors in upland areas as is the common practice in Egypt for at least 40 years. Please avoid the tendency to rely on communal ownership of tractors such as Public Sector mechanization units or even cooperatives. Under communal ownership tractors are usually sidelined after less than their 10,000-hour design service life. Just look at the line-up of non-operational tractors at any Nigerian ADP office. Is there any other way to effectively enhance the operational capacity of smallholder communities? How much will enhancing access to mechanization increase the timing of crop management, avoid the time delay induced potential yield loss, enhance food security and with staple food production under control lead to spontaneous crop diversification? How much of the food insecurity in Africa can be accounted for by the delayed crop establishment?
Does the shift from water buffalo to rice power tillers for paddy production in Asia illustrate the importance of mechanization for smallholder communities? This happened some 50 years ago concurrent with IRRI’s development of the original high yielding rice varieties. Since the shift was undertaken by the farmers without any input from the development effort, it is almost completely overlooked by the development effort which attributed the entire success of the Green Revolution to IRRI’s development of high yielding varieties and lead to an emphasis on “Knowledge Based Development for Africa while continuing to overlook necessary operational capacity. Yes, IRRI’s varietal improvement was important to getting yields up, but did not get the crop planted in the timely manner to take full advantage of those higher potential yields, this was the result the farmers on their own making the shift from water buffalo to power tillers. The shift more than halved the crop establishment time, made for comfortable double cropping rice. When small originally Japanese rice combine were introduced rice intensity increased to 5 crops in 2 years. It also allowed for diversification such as contract vegetable farming and aquaculture under poultry. A very impressive impact overlooked by most development efforts. When was the last time you saw a water buffalo working in a level paddy? Perhaps in terraced areas inaccessible to power tillers. Won’t Africa need a comparable shift to mechanization if it is to follow Asia’s agricultural development and food security success.
If you accept that manual land preparation with hoes will take a smallholder community 8 or more weeks for basic crop establishment and result in total yield that will not meet family food security needs, should we recognize it is physically impossible to hoe your way out of poverty, perhaps concentrate so laborers for a great demonstration but not an entire community. Is relying on manual hoeing really poverty entrapment!!! Who if anyone is seriously focusing on mechanization? Hello Tractors, is making a effort but it is really a small effort. How can we help finance individuals in smallholder communities to drift out of direct farming and become mechanization service providers? Is facilitating access to mechanization a percussor to getting innovations widely accepted.
How about the efforts at environmental sustainability and resilience? Are they not more labor intensive than current practices? If so, where will that labor come from, and will the energy exerted be recovered by higher yields? How much time and energy are required to convert crop residues to compost? That is time to accumulate the residues, process them into compost and return them to the field? If the labor requires exerting 300 kcal/hr., it will take 100 g of maize or milled rice to replace the calories exerted. Does each hour devoted to compost production result in the 100 grams of additional grain yield needed to compensate for the energy consumed? It is doubtful!! If not, the compost production will be unsustainable. Perhaps the best approach is to let the goats graze the residue, they do a faster job of converting crop residue that would normally have to be burned for lack of draft required to incorporate it, to what can be easily incorporated. Is it basically the same process, a microbiological breakdown of the residue, either by ruminant bacteria in the goat’s gut or soil microbes. The goats will actually derive some energy from the process rather than consuming energy.
Ultimately, do we want to continue the current innovation practices that emphasis what is physically possible and socially or environmentally desirable, “count coup” on farmer being trained in these innovations, then wash our hands with little concern if they have the operational capacity to extend the innovation across their community? This makes for great “bean counting” publicity but not a lot of acceptance. I would classify that as an insincere and incomplete effort that may demonstrate the good intentions of the promoter, but with limited success. Or should we focus on the less technical innovations to concentrate on enhancing the operational capacity so the farmers can make use of the agrifood system innovations.
For those interested in my comments you might be interested in an article I recently prepared for a symposium here at Colorado State University reflecting on my 50+ years assisting smallholder farming communities. After 50 years I am mostly retired and as such no longer behold to the system. Thus, being able to speak freely unincumbered by the politically correct party line, that may be hindering smallholder development. Thus, the article is more concerned with factual accuracy. It does go into more detail on the issues I have raised in the comment. The direct link is: https://agsci.colostate.edu/smallholderagriculture/wp-content/uploads/sites/77/2023/03/Reflections.pdf
Thank you
Dr. Dick Tinsley