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.
McAnany, Emile G. (author / Professor, International Communications, Department of Radio, Television, and Film, University of Texas, Austin, TX) and Professor, International Communications, Department of Radio, Television, and Film, University of Texas, Austin, TX
Format:
Conference paper
Publication Date:
1984
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 71 Document Number: C03166
Notes:
Keynote address; Including responses to keynote address by Thomas Guback and James F. Evans; See C03165 for original, In: Sigman, Vickie A., ed. Development communications in the third world : proceedings of a midwest regional symposium at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; April 15, 1983. Urbana, IL : College of Agriculture, University of Illinois, 1984. p. 1-18 (International Agriculture Publications General Series No. 2)
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 163 Document Number: C27070
Notes:
Posted at http://www.scidev.net > indigenous knowledge, Via Science and Development Network. 3 pages., "More should be done to build bridges between formal scientific research and informal grassroots innovations."
