It has been said that all farmers speak the same language. The challenge is to get others to speak this universal language.
For researchers, listening to the customer is good business, and, as they are increasingly discovering, good science, according to Louise Sperling and Peggy Berkowitz, authors of the CGIAR publication, "Partners in Selection - Bean Breeders and Women Bean Experts in Rwanda."
This testing of participatory breeding is also the subject of "Institutionalising Farmer Participation in Adaptive Technology Testing with the 'Cial,'" written by Jacqueline A. Ashby, et al, for the Agricultural Research and Extension Network. Ashby is with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).
The Ashby focus on Colombia and the Sperling-Berkowitz spotlight on Rwanda, before civil strife erupted in 1994, come to the same conclusion: farmers have a lot to offer researchers.
In Rwanda, beans are the key to the population's diet, with most families consuming it once a day; those who could afford the staple eat it twice daily. Beans had been providing two-thirds of their protein and a third of their calories.
A research team found that combining the different expertise of farmers and breeders early in the breeding process led to better science: faster and cheaper. The breeder-farmer partnership identified many successful and more productive options, but it also showed that working with the customer isn't always easy.
A well-known problem-the traditional breeding methods weren't working well-prompted researchers to invite women farming experts onto the research station to help select and target bean cultivars. High-yielding, disease-resistant crop varieties, refined and nurtured by discriminating breeders, were swiftly relegated to family cooking pots-no storage, no reseeding. As a result, surveys in 1988 showed that only 10 percent of bush beans tested on farmers' fields a decade earlier were still being grown, with most on the decline. This rate was modest given that Rwandans sow many varieties mixed together and can add another at little cost.
Increasing food production was a concern in Rwanda, one of the poorest countries in the world.
In the late 1980s, CIAT and the Institut des Sciences Agronomiques du Rwanda (ISAR) began to see exciting results from their introduction of high-yielding climbing beans throughout Rwanda. Scientists felt that much of their success came from really listening to farmers, learning how farmers tested and tried new technologies.
On-farm testing can be expensive and time-consuming. "The traditional farming systems approach requires a huge investment by the formal research system in understanding the farmers' conditions," said Douglas Pachico of CIAT. "The farmers already understand their conditions. Why can't we use that information...rather than create a very expensive system to enable us to learn what they already know?"
Drawing on the talents of the scientist and the farmer was indeed the answer. Breeders have access to exotic genetic material, either from other regions or uniquely created. Also, they can screen large amounts of germplasm for key stresses, particularly disease-causing agents, which farmers may not be able to see in the seed or plant. Farmers, in turn, have the edge in much that is local, indigenous to the region or practical. They cultivate in several types of soil, in varying associations and over different seasons. And they know their social or economic constraints. Why not let each partner screen according to his or her comparative advantage?
The clincher to the approach is timing. Cultivars are finished products when they reach household fields. Normally farmers can only manage or put varieties into context-for example, by altering planting dates or intercropping. Then their immediate choice is to accept or reject the cultivar. The time to begin this new partnership is when true choice still exists-in "on-station" trials, when researchers, under controlled conditions, are assessing a range of technical alternatives.
The challenges to integrating farmers onto on-station research are enormous. The most gifted have to be identified, methods combining breeder and farmer expertise developed, and station trials to be made understandable to farmers.
In Rwanda, there was an additional hurdle over the five years of the experiment. It is well-known that Rwandan women take nearly exclusive responsibility for the bean crop: variety seed selection, weeding, sowing, harvesting. It is equally well-known that station researchers are nearly all men. The presence at the research station of women farmers in the role of evaluators was revolutionary. In a society where women's power derives from their husbands and where farmers are often illiterate, to treat women farmers as experts required a sea change in thinking and behavior from all involved.
The effort was worth it. The bean varieties the farmers selected outperformed their own varieties, with production increases up to 38 percent, and outperformed varieties selected for farmers by breeders, which generally had insignificant production gains. And, instead of ending up with the one or two varieties normally released, in just four seasons farmer experts identified and adopted 21 promising cultivars, each of them targeted to micro-niche growing conditions and adding to local genetic diversity.
CIAT is also involved in the farmer participation project in Colombia. The strategy of the project is to implement participatory research methods for adaptive technology testing. This is done through the formation of farmers in Comites de Investigación Agropecuaria Local (CIALs), or locally elected committees, which manage and conduct research on behalf of the community as a whole. The local communities are responsible for the election of the committees, setting the research agenda, and helping evaluate the results. The committees carry out technology testing together with public sector agricultural research and extension agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and farmer cooperatives. Part of the project also includes development of courses and materials to train farmers and staff of various agencies.
The project promoted the formation of CIALs in five communities in southern Colombia in 1990. Thirteen more were added in 1991, 14 over the next two years, and then to 55 communities by 1994. An additional 30 CIALs have been formed in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Honduras.
A number of the CIALs have evolved into significant local seed production enterprises. The committees as a group have now formed their own corporation, enhancing information exchange and putting them on an independent financial footing.
One major byproduct of the project is that farmers are winning respect as they show their capability to manage research. This respect catalyzes a gradual reorientation of the priorities of bureaucratic institutions.
While questions about the long-term viability of CIALs must still be answered, it is already apparent that farmers can manage and conduct research on behalf of the community as a whole-and they are also quite capable of setting the research agenda and evaluating the results.
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