Transcript Folie 1
Farmer First Revisited 12 – 14 December 2007 at the Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK Presentation, Theme 2c, Creating Demand and Increasing Accountability: The Role of Farmers’ Organisations Discussant: Ann Waters-Bayer (PROLINNOVA) Farmer First Revisited: Farmer Participatory Research and Development Twenty Years On Session 2c: Creating demand and increasing accountability: the role of farmers’ organisations Discussant: Ann Waters-Bayer PROLINNOVA / ETC EcoCulture Netherlands Introduction • Role of Farmer Organisations (FOs) in strengthening farmers’ demand on agricultural research and development (ARD) • Politics of priority setting, decision-making and fund allocation in ARD • How can FOs make farmers’ voices count in ARD? • Articulating voices of marginalised farmers Beatriz del Rosario, IFAP Asia: Fostering farmer-scientist research collaboration to improve productivity and profitability • How IFAP Committee on Agricultural Research promotes collaboration of FOs and research centres • How IFAP is involved in applied research to empower farmers in the marketplace: - analysing best practices in connecting smallholders to markets - research on policy, institutions, markets, value chains etc. Khamarunga Banda: Experiences of National African Farmers Union of South Africa (NAFUSA) • Trying to give voice to black farmers • Trying to bridge divide between white commercial and black “emerging” farmers • Major concern: land issues • NAFUSA’s roles as pacifier and negotiator • Seeking to be accountable to its constituency • Doing its own research (“fact-finding”) to be able to voice members’ demands and needs Nduati Kariuki (KENFAP): Farmer-centred research • How Kenyan National Federation of Agricultural Producers works with research institutions to develop research and innovation policy and strategy to ensure that farmers’ issues and interests are addressed • Incorporating farmer participation component into research agenda • Putting farmer representatives on boards of research institutes and fora Michael Kibue, Kikasha Livestock Association, Kenya: Learning to set up a fair trade livestock marketing chain from Masai pastoralists to consumers in Nairobi • Multi-stakeholder learning platform to improve beef marketing • Based on better understanding by members along chain about each other’s roles • Making pricing transparent • Trying out new ways of working together: example of institutional action research and innovation • Importance of skilled and committed facilitator for effective learning process Elizabeth Vargas, CIPCA (Centre for Research and Promotion of Indigenous Peasant People): Farmers’ participation in policy advocacy processes • Examples from Bolivia of how peasant farmers organised themselves to influence policy related to education, culture and NRM • How peasant farmer organisations reinforced their influence in policy advocacy by joining forces with traditional institutions with decision-making power at community, intercommunity and district level Assetou Kanouté, ADAF-Galle: Promoting Farmer Experimentation and Innovation in the Sahel (PROFEIS) • Mali experience in strengthening capacities of state agricultural services, NGOs and CBOs to support farmerled innovation in NRM • Partnership of FO network, NGOs and national research institute as equal members in Steering Committee • FOs responsible for facilitating field activities • Identifying endogenous innovation as entry point to joint experimentation by farmers, NGOs and scientists, based on farmers’ research questions Issues highlighted Farmers’ influence on formal research • Few research centres collaborate regularly with FOs in their countries • FOs need to make more efforts to work closely with research networks at all levels • FOs should be in governance bodies of research centres and fora • Farmers should be setting the research agenda Role of government • Important to maintain public investment in agricultural research and extension • Need to keep ownership of key research results in public sphere to protect public interests and to give farmers choice Issues highlighted – 2 – Research issues • Research should deal with socio-economic and institutional issues such as farmer organisation, marketing, necessary institutional, legal and political framework Farmers’ involvement • Getting beyond merely involving farmers in testing or co-developing technologies to their involvement in institutional and policy research • Also their involvement in interpreting and formulating research results in ways that they can use in policy advocacy Access to research results • Making results available and spread widely in user-friendly forms – likely to be more understandable and to spread more quickly if FOs are involved in research and dissemination of results Differences between continents? Latin American versus African examples: • No obvious advocacy efforts of peasant farmers to influence formal institutions of ARD • Are they not concerned about what is happening in ARD? • Like small-scale mountain FO in southern Germany: - said agricultural research was completely irrelevant for them - they get their information from elsewhere • Same for peasant FOs in Bolivia? little interest to influence public-sector research because they think it has no relevance for their lives? What was not mentioned? Re farmer representation on research governance bodies: • Whom do farmer representatives actually represent - larger or smaller-scale farmers? - more commercial or more subsistence-oriented farmers? - women or men? - richer or poorer? - healthy versus HIV/AIDSaffected households? - etc • Is their participation in governance genuine or token – do their voices have weight? What was not mentioned? – 2 – • Role of FOs in alternative funding mechanisms for Farmer First approaches: how farmers’ control over research funds gives them real power to influence research agendas, e.g. locally managed innovation / research funds • Disconnect between Farmer Research Groups or other grassroots-level organisations with which Farmer-First approaches are applied and formalised FOs at national and international level Some points for discussion 1. How important is (participatory) agricultural research for FOs? 2. What should be the roles of FOs in agricultural innovation systems? What conflicts / trade-offs are involved in playing these roles? 3. To whom should research and advisory services be accountable, and what role can FOs play in achieving this accountability? 4. What role(s) should FOs have with regard to financing agricultural research and governing research funds? 5. How can FOs make the voices of marginalised farmers heard - in their own organisations and - in policy platforms related to ARD?