Evolution and new directions using information systems for enhancing farmer partnership in NARS agricultural research

摘要

For many developing countries, agricultural research has been built on the models of the previous colonial rulers. The supply of technical knowledge from the outside, and the local adaptation of this knowledge, would enable technology transfer to takeplace via extension agents to the peasant farmer, expected to be a male between 30 and 40 years of age. It is with some regret that we must admit that many national research organizations still work like this. And it is with some regret that we can observe that there have been patterns in the behavior of international agricultural research institutions that have reinforced this historic model. The modern peasant farmer of Latin America and many parts of Asia goes to his or her field in the morning witha transistor radio on their shoulder, blaring out the latest pop music from commercial radio stations. Most villages have a TV, fascinating its inhabitants with soap operas set in the urbanized contexts of USA, Europe, Mexico or Brazil. And most farmersare young, and in many countries, particularly in Africa, they are teenage girls trying to keep families together under the stresses of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. What we have witnessed in Sierra Leone and Liberia, in East Timor and parts of Indonesia and the Philippines, is that the lack of prospects of adequate rural livelihoods entices young men to become soldiers of fortune instead of soldiering on the farm.How do we organize new agricultural research and extension to reach those that are about to leave the land (as they have done on a massive scale in Latin America and increasingly in Asia and Africa)? How to we make it likely that we can generate the kinds of income and settings that make it attractive to remain on the land? It can be argued that the main incentive to stay on the land must come from increased income, not from increased production. Indeed, increased production (the target of so much agricultural research) repeatedly leads to decreases in prices and little economic improvement.There is in my view no single mechanism that can assist in achieving this. But there are indications that information technology can be applied to set agricultural research agendas that are more directly relevant to the needs of small farmers. There arealso indications that there are new tools that allow research findings to reach farmers much more efficiently than through classical extension methods. And there are now many experiments to show that information technology may offer the possibility to let knowledge travel up and down that last elusive mile to the farm gate of the most distant farmerInformation technology is often now strongly linked to Internet technology In the context of the developing world the term must be seen as more inclusive. The traditional news media (radio, TV) may be more important than the web, and Internet access is seriously limited in many countries in Africa, although less so in Latin America and parts of Asia. Rural radio constitutes a strong communication tool.