17 pages, via online journal, The greatest challenge now facing agricultural science is not how to increase production overall but how to enable resource-poor farmers to produce more.
The transfer-of-technology (TOT) model of agricultural research is part of the normal professionalism of agricultural scientists. In this model, scientists largely determine research priorities, develop technologies in controlled conditions, and then hand them over to agricultural extension to transfer to farmers. Although strong structures and incentives sustain this normal professionalism, many now recognise the challenge of its bad fit with the needs and conditions of hundreds of millions of resource-poor farm (RPF) families. In response to this problem, the TOT model has been adapted and extended through multi-disciplinary farming systems research (FSR) and on-farm trials. These responses retain power in the hands of scientists. Information is obtained from farmers and processed and analysed in order to identify what might be good for them. A missing element is methods to encourage and enable resource-poor farmers themselves to meet and work out what they need and want.
Africa: Northern Region Agricultural Rehabilitation Project, Khartoum, Sudan
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 133 Document Number: C20500
Notes:
Burton Swanson Collection, pages 47-52, from "Transfer of technology for the agricultural development in the northern region of Sudan", Proceedings of the in-house meeting Khartoum, Sudan, 20-22 October 1987
