Many interesting agricultural initiatives take place in the Middle East but few of these are shared in written form. As a result, there is a feeling that nothing much happens there, while the opposite is many times the case. To address this, a project involving practitioners from Jordan, the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Egypt was set up. As part of this project, between April and May 2016, a documentation workshop with participants from the three countries was organised. The goal of the workshop was to use a structured documentation process and produce articles that share lessons from pastoralists’ initiatives and experiences. Most of the participants had never published any of their written work before. Many had not even considered writing down their stories.The 24 participants were invited to join a ‘sandwich’ process: two workshops separated by an intermediate period back home. Participants prepared for the workshop with some introductory reading on documentation and by selecting an experience from their work as a case to describe and analyse in the workshop.

First things first

The first workshop started with a discussion around the general context of pastoralism in the Middle East – the difficulties to find relevant resources in Arabic, and the role that eld practitioners can have in filling this gap. Participants then looked at what documentation actually is, the main principles that shape a documentation process (e.g. that it is participatory), the main conditions needed (organisational support, a critical view), and the main barriers to documenting experiences.

Next, participants started their own documentation process. Based on a set of templates they started drawing clear boundaries around the chosen cases (identifying the area covered, the starting date and duration, the main objectives and the context in which the experience took place). Participants then described all activities and the results of their experience. A third session focused on the analysis, starting with selection of criteria that can be used to evaluate an experience (e.g. environmental impact or repeatability), and then identifying indicators to assess if these criteria were met. With clear criteria and indicators, participants went on to look at the underlying reasons, factors or conditions which contributed, in a positive or negative way, to the results of the experience.

A second meeting

“I always saw my experience as just a story. But now I see how special it really is”

Participants returned to the second workshop with a first draft of an article about their chosen case. This second meeting could best be described as a writeshop as the intention of each participant was to improve upon the first draft of their article. After an introductory session, the participants critically examined their own and their peers’ articles. The peer review process was a particularly valuable learning experience. Two rounds of peer revision took place: a first one with members of their own team, as people who knew about each experience and its context, and a second one with groups that were new to the documented cases. This second group helped to identify extra details needed to make the story understandable to an outsider.

The foundations of the documentation process made it easier to pinpoint where extra attention was needed. It became clear that a common pitfall amongst participants was that their articles were more descriptive than analytical.

Challenges and results

The positive attitude and interest shown by all participants helped enormously. But it was not easy to run a workshop in both Arabic and English, requiring continuous translation and switching of languages. Facilitating a workshop in a foreign language is always a challenge, but it becomes even more complicated when writing is involved as it was impossible to provide quick feedback. In this setting, the (guided) peer review sessions became even more important.Working towards a written output such as published articles provides an incentive to keep working on the documented cases, even if engaging in a critical process is confronting. Moreover, writing helps people see the significance of different aspects of their work. As one participant said, “I always saw my experience as just a story. But now that I have written it down, I see how special it really is.” Publishing written work gives the authors and their work recognition, and it allows them to share their experiences on a global scale.

Many participants had never met other herders from neighbouring countries. This workshop showed that they could learn from each other. It also showed the advantages of a documentation process to raise their own and other herders’ voices, and make them heard.

Documentation and systematisation?
 
The terms ‘documentation’ and ‘systematisation’ are often used interchangeably. Although, documentation is used in this article, systematisation more aptly captures the whole meaning: a process which seeks to organise available information on an experience, analyse it in detail to understand what and how it happened, draw conclusions which will help generate new knowledge, and present this new knowledge in an appropriate, shareable format, for instance as an article. Systematising experiences through well written articles is one way of demonstrating impact. Such an article provides evidence of what works and what doesn’t and enables the reader to draw lessons from others’ experiences. The process of analysis and writing also enables the writer to draw lessons from their own experiences.

Laura Eggens (lauraeggens@yahoo.com) and Jorge Chavez-Tafur (j.chavez.tafur@gmail.com) worked as consultants for ILEIA.

This article is part of the visibility and communications work being carried out under the framework of the Food Security Governance of Bedouin Pastoralist Groups in the Mashreq Project, funded by the European Union. The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of ILEIA and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.

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The importance of education for development is almost universally accepted. Education is not only a human right, but also a tool for development. But it is obvious that this tool is not always delivering results in rural areas. Although more students are reached now than in the past, the resources available are still limited.

A much larger problem, however, is the way in which countries’ education systems meet rural needs, especially when these are rapidly changing. This raises the question of whether education should respond to today’s needs or focus on preparing students for the future.

In industrialised countries, very few school children will become farmers, or will make a living in rural areas. Similar, though less extreme, patterns can be discerned in many developing countries where many school leavers find the pull of the city irresistible. They see a direct link between farming and poverty and view the city as a greener pasture. Inadvertently or not, education programmes in rural areas encourage the youth to leave for the cities.

Yet agriculture will continue to be a fundamental economic activity, and farming will continue to shape the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Even abandoned villages will remain part of the cultural heritage and deeply rooted identities of large populations. However rapidly urbanisation proceeds, rural émigrés and those who continue to live in the countryside will continue to relive their stories and songs that portray afternoons in the shadow of a mango tree and the ritual celebrations for a good harvest. But how can these nostalgic memories be aligned with the realities of inherited poverty, land grabbing and stagnant traditions?

Millions of students going to school today (together with millions who still don’t have the opportunity) will follow in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents and become growers or herders. They, like their parents now, will be responsible for providing 50% of the world’s food. How to prepare them for this responsibility?

We should start by identifying the type of agriculture we want as a (global) society. The choice is essentially between pursuing a globalised industrial agriculture, or an alternative pathway that recognises the multifunctionality and diversity of family farming and the contribution that it can make to addressing challenges such as hunger and malnutrition, loss of biodiversity and climate change. If we follow the latter path, teaching methodologies such as Farmer Field Schools are very useful: they focus on strengthening farmers’ capacities to analyse their agro-ecosystems. This empowers them to make their own judgements and take decisions that work for them, rather than depending on others telling them what to do. These efforts support the continuous development of an efficient and sustainable production system.

Skills and values

But just as development is not limited to economic growth, agriculture is not only about yields and outputs. Agriculture is not just a technical activity requiring technical skills, but also a key force that shapes societies, cultures and landscapes. Even urban environments are shaped by farming and agriculture: as consumers we all benefit from the services provided by farmers.

If education is to contribute to the transformation of rural areas, it needs to be more than just for agriculture, limited to teaching farmers how to farm. As the different articles in this issue show, educational programmes about agriculture, targeted at a wider group than just farmers, are also important. While formal and non-formal education should train farmers to develop specific skills for the sustainable production and marketing of their products, it also needs to be about values and interests, and about transforming perceptions and attitudes – in rural areas and in the cities, among farmers and consumers.

In spite of the key role played by farmers, farming is often seen as an activity carried out by those who cannot do anything else; a last option that can easily be abandoned as soon as other opportunities arise. Unfortunately, most education programmes encourage these views, leading to the feelings of “disjointedness” mentioned by Meenakshi Singh and seen in rural areas all over the world. Education needs to counter this, to help develop feelings of self-esteem, appreciation and pride among farming communities and give them the recognition they deserve. The key role farmers play today, and which they will continue playing, needs to be acknowledged.

These changes need to be supported by changes in those responsible for education and extension programmes, and also by changes in those in charge of a country’s policies and programmes. For example, teacher training programmes that encourage teachers to reach out to young women, ethnic minorities or pastoralists, and to develop new perspectives on family farming with them, play a valuable role in encouraging diversity and opening up hitherto unrecognised potential. The best examples are seen in approaches where the curricula are built on local knowledge and experience, on what students know and want to know, and on the challenges they face. Landini and Bianqui show the importance of not only changing the perspective of extension agents, but also of involving them in this process, building on their immediate needs and concerns and enhancing their professional identities.

Reconnecting with family farming

All too often education in rural areas serves to disconnect and estrange rural people from their own culture and environment, and increases the gap between rural and urban settings. Yet education can actively support young rural people in their search for identity and future opportunities. Education needs to be better connected to rural realities and the enormous potential that family farming, based on agro-ecology, has in addressing the pressing challenges facing the world today.

The initiatives highlighted in this issue, even if small in scale, are all building towards this. It’s time to come up with the energy, inspiration and dedication to make education a genuine force for innovation in agriculture.

Loes Witteveen and Jorge Chavez-Tafur

Loes Witteveen co-ordinates the Master’s programme in Rural Development and Communication (RDC) at Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences.

Jorge Chavez-Tafur is the editor of Farming Matters.

The authors thank Mary Abokyi, Tesfaye Gemechu Amesa, Walid Mahuob, Tegegn Molla, Murtiti Muharamiah, Grace Tambo and Muditha Palliyage, graduates of the RDC programme, for their support in producing this issue.

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Described more than ten years ago in LEISA Magazine, the number of farmers practising SRI has grown enormously since then. “I think that SRI is something unprecedented, as very few innovations before have shown such a huge productivity windfall. And just as surprising is the fact that we have been able to proceed on such an international scale with so little support and so much opposition.”

Why is SRI so special?

More than producing rice, we’re talking about a different way of working with farmers, involving both technical and social dimensions. The two are put together. SRI is not a technology that can be put into a box. It is a set of ideas and experiences, a set of relationships and a set of values. This is often really hard to get across, especially to agronomists or to economists who want consider SRI as “only this” or “no more than that”.

It should be kept in mind that the original objective of Tefy Saina in Madagascar was not just to grow more rice, but to help the rural people understand their situation and take the opportunity to improve it. While SRI was intended to help people produce more food, it was also expected to help them “liberate” themselves from unfounded beliefs or social pressures.

Are its benefits being recognised?

Unfortunately, there is still resistance from some sources, and some scientists still use controversy over the highest yields obtained with SRI to avoid facing up to the much greater average high yields which farmers get. Yet it is clear that things are changing; for example, there is now an SRI page on the website of the International Rice Research Institute.

Aren’t there still missing explanations?

It is true that we still don’t fully understand all the agronomy behind SRI. But there are more than 300 published articles on SRI by now, so a lot is now known and has been validated. It has also been surprising to learn that SRI ideas and practices can be successfully extrapolated to wheat, finger millet, sugarcane and other crops, even recently to elephant foot yam.

In Bihar, India, the first farmer trials with this root crop have given yields of 100 tons, whereas farmers usually get 20-30 tons, and best management practices from the university only reach 60 tons… Something is going on that promotes more photosynthesis and carbohydrate production, and greater yields across many crops. This is so different paradigmatically that a lot of people are simply not buying it.

Shouldn’t scientists be interested in learning what this “something” is?

Absolutely, and I spend much of my time trying to get scientists in various disciplines to become involved in such research, even if this is, for many, a hard sell.

Fortunately, more and more researchers are showing interest, and we are starting to work with more microbiologists, which is great, because I don’t see any way to understand the results that we are seeing in the field without paying attention to microbiology. Our minds are used to the macro, but there are millions, billions, trillions of micro-organisms involved in the soil, in plants, even in our own bodies.

We are starting to understand how essential microbes are for human health and growth. The same applies to plants. What we are seeing is that the plant is not a little machine, to be redesigned and controlled entirely by us, but rather a system in symbiosis with billions of other organisms. SRI focuses on farming practices, dealing with seed quantities, spacing, water, labour, etc., but at the same time, it is about a shift in paradigms.

Unfortunately, the latter is much harder to write about; we don’t yet know enough about it; and it puts off many agronomists who don’t want to question what they think they already know.

Are there other factors involved?

It may be that SRI is not moving faster because there are no commercial interests behind it, although we have seen SRI promoted by grain millers in Sri Lanka and India (as SRI paddy has fewer unfilled grains, thus less chaff, and the grains do not break as easily during milling). With the adoption of SRI there can be some losers, such as those who make a living selling seeds.

It has taken some time for donor agencies to accept and promote SRI, maybe because their success is too often assessed by how much money is spent and SRI reduces rather than increases capital requirements. But the biggest benefit of SRI is for farmers, as it allows them to reduce their costs and become more independent. I like to think, as a social scientist, that the most interesting aspect of SRI is its farmer-centred and farmer-driven approach.

Sometimes SRI is presented as a recipe; but I prefer to regard it as a menu. Unfortunately, it has been very difficult to change the focus of extension programmes from promoting input use to presenting ideas. Many extension agents have been trained to push agrochemicals, seeds, fertilizers or machinery. But SRI is not about inputs; it is about ideas. And this is hard for many to accept, even for some working with very innovative NGOs. SRI involves a paradigm shift.

Is there a change in the way researchers work with farmers?

I like to highlight the “triangular model” developed by Merrill-Sands and Kaimowitz. This is very different from the standard “linear model” of technology development, whereby scientists do the thinking and farmers are expected to adopt what extension agents tell them. Researchers, extension agents and farmers are more effective when positioned in a triangular relationship, interacting with each other.

In such a model, extensionists are facilitators and catalysts, and communications flow back and forth in all three directions. This triangular model represents what we see in SRI fields. Innovation can come from any one of the three partners. SRI is not only a farmer-led process; a lot of improvements have come from and continue to be developed by extension professionals and by researchers. This triangular model helps us to better understand what we’re seeing in the field, and also helps us recommend stronger interactions.

These interactions are also helped by “champions”…

Champions, advocates, proponents, catalysts, they come in all shapes and sizes, and all of them are “sticking their necks out” and playing very important roles. These are individuals who are all different, with different histories, but who share a common denominator: their interest in working for the benefit of farmers, consumers and the environment.

Some have a political agenda, others are apolitical, but all are interested in farmers’ welfare. And they all share qualities such as being able to work up and down within the system, from capital cities to farmers’ fields. This is what I saw in Cambodia, where those promoting SRI were able to talk equally well to ministers as to farmers.

One of the major advantages that we have had is the initiative of these champions. Another good thing has been that a lot of farmers have become advocates themselves, spending their own time and money to promote, defend and spread SRI.

I was persuaded of SRI’s merits in the early 2000s when I met and talked with two remarkable farmers, one in Cambodia, Mey Som, and another in Sri Lanka, H.M. Premaratna, both of whom had trained several thousands of other farmers at their own expense. If farmers are willing to train others, in their own time and with their own resources, then it must be beneficial.

Aren’t you also a champion?

After three years of seeing small-scale and poor farmers around Ranomana National Park in Madagascar getting four times more yield, on soils that some US agronomists considered some of the poorest they had evaluated, I thought I needed to learn enough French to read Father de Laulanie’s papers and enough agronomy to communicate with agronomists about what we were learning. Something was going on, and nobody was promoting it.

It sort of fell to me to try to inform and mobilise people, to invite universities to do research, to approach donor agencies, and to make SRI visible outside Madagascar. My aim was not to promote the use of SRI as such, but more to get its methods and results evaluated, by both scientists and farmers. If they liked the results, they could take them and use them however they liked.

Surely it helped that I was based at Cornell, that I enjoy writing and editing, and also was travelling and meeting practitioners in many countries. Like the champions I mentioned already, I like to spend time with all kinds of people, with farmers, PhD students, research directors and policy-makers.

I know that my directness has not always been appreciated and that my arguments and evidence are “controversial” in the eyes of many. Some have said that I am too passionate, and I have learned that most scientists don’t like passion. But passion has nothing to do with the truth of the matter. My goal has been to get SRI evaluated and understood. To get to the truth, let us study it.

Isn’t there an obvious need to look at what farmers are doing?

Certainly, farmers have been growing rice for thousands of years. However, we should not assume that everything that farmers do is optimal. Our SRI experience shows that, for thousands of years, farmers have been ploughing their soils too much, have flooded their fields too much and have planted too many seedlings, wasting water and seeds and lowering yields.

And millions of farmers must have seen that the rice plants in the upper portions of their fields, which are better drained, were growing better than those in the lower parts of their fields. Farmers should have figured out that it is better to use fewer seeds, but didn’t.

So let us respect farmer knowledge, but let’s not idealise it or accept it uncritically, forgetting that there can be gaps or serious misunderstandings. For many different reasons, farmers also do some suboptimal things – just like researchers or professors do.

Do you see more communication and exchange among farmers once they start using SRI?

This is another aspect that we should be looking at, and measuring if possible. Both in Cambodia and in Mali, for example, colleagues have mentioned to me that farmers who became engaged with SRI also became more interested in sharing their results, and in working together, leading to greater levels of collective action and social capital.

The evidence so far is anecdotal, but I don’t dismiss it. We have also seen the emergence of self-help groups, for example, in the state of Bihar, India, where women who are now using SRI and SWI (SRI ideas applied to wheat) are co-operating to improve their households’ welfare, and are improving their families’ future by requiring that members’ daughters go to school.

The government of Bihar has been wise enough to work together with local NGOs, and the results are tremendous, extending beyond agriculture to social benefits. Households are gaining access to credit, there is more local employment, the drudgery of women’s labour is reduced, local ecosystems become healthier; SRI has fuelled many other processes beyond better rice production.

So what’s next? At our first (and so far only) international conference on SRI, held in China in 2002, we decided to proceed along two parallel tracks: scientific research and extension activities. This was different from the usual strategy where science is done first and extensionists spread whatever scientists recommend. SRI has been proceeding with a “walk on both legs” approach; but extension has moved ahead faster, and the science is only now catching up. I’d like to see SRI being addressed across many disciplines, by soil science and plant breeding, but also economics, sociology, communications, etc.

We are trying for SRI to converge with other agro-ecological approaches such as conservation agriculture, organic farming, IPM, and agroforestry. And we are getting more private sector involvement with SRI. There are 4 to 5 million farmers, most in Asia, using some or all of the recommended SRI practices. But it is only a matter of time before this doubles to 10 or 20 million, and then to 50 to 100 million and more.

As the results keep spreading and accumulating, any remaining scientific opposition will become quite untenable, and more and more governments and donors will support the spread of this knowledge and these opportunities.

Interview: Jorge Chavez-Tafur

For more information, please visit the SRI-Rice ONLINE website (http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu) or write to Norman Uphoff directly.
E-mail: ntu1@cornell.edu

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Chris ReijChris Reij went first to West Africa in 1978 as a regional planner, at a time when, after a severe drought period “serious erosion was taking place and yields were declining drastically”. Yet, looking back, he feels that desertification is now an even more serious problem.

However, “in this ‘sea of doom and gloom’ you find many ‘islands of success’ where the degradation rates have not only diminished in the past 30 years, but where things have improved, and which have an enormous potential for scaling up. This is all very positive.”

Looking at the world as a whole, are the deserts growing?

All over the world, we see recurrent periods of drought, a severe depletion of soil fertility, and the degradation of the vegetation cover. So, yes, we can say that things are worse. In West Africa, in particular, there was a prolonged drought between 1968 and 1973, and rainfall remained low, and it is still irregular. Farmers have been forced to expand their cultivated areas in order to compensate for the declining crop yields, cultivating in areas which had some tree cover, and therefore cutting the trees in order to farm.

During the 1970s and 80s we saw an enormous decline in the vegetation cover in order to increase the total yields – basically by expanding agricultural production into land that was marginal, creating degradation. Today, climate change is only making the situation worse for farmers and herders.

This is a gloomy picture…

Yes, it is gloomy. In a way, we are heading into a perfect storm. And unless we do something at a large scale, we are heading into trouble. But things are happening, and we now know much better what to do, and how to do it. And if you look at the Sahel, there is a lot of evidence, with farmers engaged in a very successful approach. If you go to southern Niger, you will find 200 million trees that were not there 20 or 25 years ago. And this is not because farmers started planting trees, but because farmers protect and manage the trees that regenerate spontaneously in their farms. What you see is that the density of on-farm trees has increased, while vegetation in the common lands has degraded, so there is a shift from natural vegetation to agroforestry systems on farms. This is highly relevant to farmers, especially in areas of high population density. And it shows that farmers have come up with systems that can cope with drought.

Is this just one ‘island of success’?

This is an island, but it is an island of 5 million hectares, which is bigger than the Netherlands. And it happens in a place where farmers had their backs against the wall. Yields had gone down so much, the population densities were so high, the natural vegetation cover almost didn’t exist anymore, so women had difficulties with the household energy supply.

Without intensifying their agricultural production system and increasing production sustainably, farmers would have been forced to leave, there would no longer be a future for them.

Whose idea was it?

Perhaps this is what I like most. This is local knowledge, and local knowledge in action. The contribution of projects, and even of researchers, has basically been limited to supporting farmer’s efforts. We are only catalysing processes, and creating movements. It is the farmers who are experimenting and innovating.

Isn’t there a contradiction between producing food and stopping the deserts?

I don’t think so. If anything, the contradiction was there before the 1960s, when most of West Africa was following the “modernisation” paradigm, and “good” farmers were those who cultivated a monocrop and who wouldn’t have trees on their fields. Even after independence, many governments subsidised farmers to remove the trees from their fields, in order to allow for mechanisation, in the hope of achieving higher yields. It is clear now that this kind of modernisation was detrimental to the sustainability of agricultural production systems, because it causes a lot of erosion, and thus also affects crop yields. What we see now is a reversal of that paradigm. The evidence points in the other direction: without on-farm trees, there is no future for agriculture in Africa’s drylands.

So are there more crops now?
You can see enormous differences between the villages with trees and those without trees. Trees produce fodder, so families have more livestock. Trees produce leaves, which are sometimes part of the human diet. Trees produce firewood, which farmers can even sell in the markets for cash which they can use to buy expensive cereals on the market during drought years.

Villages without trees do not have the same opportunities, and this translates directly into higher infant mortality rates. I don’t necessarily believe in a strict organic approach; adding small quantities of fertilizers can be very beneficial. But this is not just about fertilizers, but about complexity, and about developing complex agricultural production systems which are more resistant to drought, and more productive. And these can be seen in place.

Aren’t more ingredients needed?

The technical part of the protection and management of the trees is very simple, but you need village institutions; the people need to organise themselves in order to manage the new tree capital. So the building of village institutions is required, and there are two possibilities. Either you look and see if there are traditional institutions which can be revitalised, as it is happening in some parts of Mali, or you help build new village institutions which can do the job, as is happening in some parts of Niger.

Either way, these village institutions need to have a balanced representation of men and women, and also of herders, and also of the young. And then you see that, over the years, these village institutions do their job by, for example, sanctioning those who do not respect their rules for managing their resources… These village institutions are developing into problem solving institutions: when other problems emerge, villagers can meet and discuss and come to an agreement. And the villagers soon realise that there are also neighbouring villages going through the same process, so they are now in the process of building inter-village institutions. It takes time, as it is a complex process, but it is happening, and it works.

Don’t you also need land ownership?

Natural regeneration
Natural regeneration“Having gone to the Sahel many times, the first time I really saw success was in the Yatenga region of Burkina Faso, where an agroforestery project was supporting farmers in improving a traditional technique of putting putting stones in a contour. This helped them reduce or slow down the flow of water in the fields, which caused water to infiltrate, also reducing damage downstream. This led to an increase in the numbers of trees regenerating, and thus to many more trees in the fields. Several years later, I was sitting with farmers in Senegal, who just told me to look around. ‘Look around you, we’ve been planting trees since 1984, what do you see? Nothing’. But then they took me to another place, and said ‘we’ve been protecting the natural regeneration in this area, and what do you see…?’ And it was lush green. You saw the young trees coming up and growing quickly.
 
“Of course, there is a limited number of species that regenerate, and the whole process also depends on what you have as ‘seed memory’ in the soil. In terms of cost-effectiveness, however, the natural regeneration approach is better because you skip a nursery, you don’t need to transport your trees to the areas where they are going to be planted, and you dont need to water them after planting. No wonder that more and more farmers are picking this up.”
 
We are talking about individuals, managing their property. So this only works when farmers have the exclusive rights to the trees on their farms. Back in the 1980s, the land and all the natural resources belonged to the state, a heritage of the French colonial times. But this started changing after 1985.
 
Clearly defining issues such as the ownership of the land and of the trees is a key condition for success. In that sense, it is very important to work with national governments, and to engage in dialogue in order to create enabling agricultural development policies and forest legislation which gives farmers the explicit ownership of their own farm trees.

So you need a national-level framework that supports, or at least does not go against what farmers are doing…

Exactly. You need policies which enable farmers to do things, and also policies that give them an incentive to take care of their resources. We need good policies and legislation.

It is vital to create grassroots movements and work from the bottom up, but we also need to go from the top downwards, creating and enabling national policies and legislation. There is a role for both. I think that farmers can be even more effective if the national policies and legislation support this process.

There are no other major obstacles which would prevent us from being successful, so I think that success is within reach.

<b?So are we going to see 5 million hectares of trees elsewhere?

We will see them soon in many other places. But we need a systematic strategy for scaling up the agroforestry successes seen in Niger and other areas. This would have to include farmer study visits, or bringing farmers from one place to another, and helping them see what other farmers are achieving.

Another component could be to spread information by systematically using ICTs, mobile phones and rural radio, and giving the floor to all those farmers who have so much to say. In short, it requires an effective and efficient knowledge management programme. And this programme needs to include policy makers.

Many national policy makers have no clue of what is happening on the ground. You need to bring the policy makers from governments and donor agencies into the field, and show them what is happening on the ground, so that they get inspired by success, and support similar processes.

And what must they do?

If they are Members of Parliament they will see if there is a need to revise the forestry legislation in order to make it more supportive. If they work with media and communications, they can find ways to communicate these achievements to a larger section of the public. There is a whole toolbox that can be used for scaling up.

Which brings us to international platforms, such as the UNCCD. What would you tell them?

With Luc Gnacadja at the helm, the UNCCD is in good hands, and their message is pointing in the right direction. The problem is that not all the countries that signed up to the Convention are taking all the right steps to get there, so we still have a lot to do.

Interview: Jorge Chavez-Tafur

For more information, please contact Chris Reij at c.p.reij@vu.nl or visit the website of the Africa Re-greening Initiatives: www.africa-regreening.blogspot.com

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The International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are involved in many country projects that seek to reduce rural poverty and food insecurity in Asia and the Pacific.

People working on these projects acquire valuable knowledge and a wealth of practical experience. However, their knowledge is often “lost” when projects end.

By developing capacities to share knowledge, the FAO-IFAD programme helped ensure that projects build on proven successes and avoid repeating errors, that the voices of a wide group of stakeholders are included, and that knowledge is properly documented and well communicated, so that it can have the greatest impact.

Working with regional organisations (such as, for example, ICIMOD in Nepal), the programme offered “hands-on workshops” focusing on participatory techniques and tools for knowledge sharing, and on writing skills. In total, more than 380 people participated throughout the year, representing projects being implemented in countries as diverse as China and the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

Focusing on “a methodology which facilitates the ongoing description and analysis of the processes and results of a development project”, the programme paid specific attention to a systematisation process. This meant presenting some basic principles (such as involving as many stakeholders as possible, or identifying the general conditions needed), and then actually starting a systematisation process for sharing knowledge. The work of some of the participants, such as Abdul Qayyum Abbasi, describing and analysing the Community Development Programme in Pakistan, has already been published and shared.

One of the most interesting lessons learnt was about the use of videos. Participants discussed the challenges that practitioners face in using images in a systematisation process. This doesn’t necessarily need expensive tools and materials – hand held devices such as mobile phones can be adequate. Videos are not only useful as a way of presenting a final product: they can also be used for collecting information (e.g. in interviews), for highlighting someone’s opinion, and for asking feedback from other participants.

Training future trainers

The programme also organised a three-day “training of trainers” session, with the objective of scaling up and sustaining the process. Some project staff who had attended the previous training events were invited to a workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal, in December 2011. The main objective was to present and discuss the issues that trainers (or facilitators) should consider when organising a systematisation process. Our discussions started by focusing on the necessary logistics and the general objectives. Participants discussed the advantages that such a process can bring in terms of advocacy, or simply by helping to “avoid re-inventing the wheel.”

We looked at the importance of carefully selecting participants, in a way so that they contribute to and benefit from the process as much as possible. Beyond considering different groups or stakeholders, and considering specific criteria (such as being associated to an IFAD project), we also looked at other regularly occurring issues: the difficulties of inviting and managing a large group, and thus the need to to select those who represent a large community, and the difficulties when having different “categories” working together (politicians with farmers, extension agents with the director of an organisation) which can lead to some participating much less than others. The discussions paid special attention to the role of the trainer, who plays an influential role in every systematisation process. Trainers need to decide their level of engagement: will they just provide the necessary resources for a process to take place, will they try to “catalyse” it, or will they actually take charge of it all? Each of these choices has implications for the selection of participants, and may mean providing mentoring, apprenticeship or coaching possibilities. Trainers also need to think about the different tools or techniques they will utilise and what, if any, incentives to provide to participants.

Finally, the participants looked at the steps that are common to all documentation processes, regardless of the methodology followed, and at ways of addressing the most common problems:

• How to select the “case” to be documented, which requires considering the audience who will benefit from the documentation process.
• How to collect data and information, and the importance of finding what information is already available, or of going to the field, and asking participants and stakeholders in situ.
• The need to encourage participation and involvement: (i) before the workshop, by selecting the “right” participants, (ii) during the workshop, by using different tools, defining people’s roles and responsibilities and defining and explicitly mentioning all expectations, and (iii) after the workshop, providing incentives, or inviting participants to contribute to any subsequent publication.
• The dissemination of the results, which starts by identifying the target audience and then deciding what type of document is best (a policy brief, an article in a journal, etc.). Such documents can always be reinforced and made more accessible by using different media tools, such as press releases, the internet, street theatre, posters, or radio programmes.

The last step involved a short discussion about the need of scaling up and sustaining these efforts and also every systematisation process. This meant looking at the necessary requisites (support, resources), and at the steps to follow. Jun Virola, from the Philippines, highlighted that “this workshop was a systematisation process in itself. We looked at where we are, what we have been doing, and we described what we want to happen. At the end we were able to prepare and share our action plans.” The first steps have been taken: many trainers are up and ready to start training their colleagues.

Text: Denise Melvin and Jorge Chavez-Tafur

Denise Melvin, Communications Officer at FAO, worked as Programme Coordinator on the FAO-IFAD Programme for the Development of Knowledge Sharing Skills (e-mail: ks-asia@fao.org).

Jorge Chavez-Tafur facilitated the training workshops in the Philippines, Nepal and China.

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We started with a four-day workshop that took place in Kampala in January, where we first went through the basic concepts, principles and conditions needed for a successful documentation process.

We stressed the difference between a documentation process and a description, the need to include different opinions and, most importantly, the role of documentation in “generating knowledge”.

After a short presentation of the methodology, we immediately started the documentation process with the aim of “learning by doing”. This meant selecting the part of the project that participants wanted to document and share, describing the main activities and results, and analysing them all in detail, selecting indicators for the results and impact of the project and identifying the reasons (or causes) behind each one.

The four different teams then continued with the description and analysis of their work at their own project bases, identifying the main issues that confronted them while going through the process: the importance of “narrowing” or further defining the case to be documented; the analysis, considering the identification and use of criteria and indicators; the need to capture additional information; and the general presentation of the results. Meetings were then held separately with each team.

Learning by doing

After going through the complete process, participants realised that, in contrast to what they had thought at the beginning, documenting one’s own experience is not necessarily difficult, or something that has to be done by external consultants. Participants found that the process “helped us find a way to tell the untold story”. They also identified some key issues that need special attention.

•      Documentation as a participatory process. A documentation process cannot be done in a short time period, or without the involvement of many different people. The exercise showed the importance of getting data and opinions from all those who are or have been involved in a project, and of distributing roles and responsibilities within a team. This led to discussions about the importance of assigning sufficient time and resources.
•      Participants in the workshops and process. Considering that documentation is a participatory process, it is essential to carefully consider who should be invited to attend the workshops and meetings. We discussed the pros and cons of inviting too many people and also of inviting farmers. Another important question to consider is the participation of all team members. Not all team members were able to be present throughout the whole process, affecting their overall participation and the results of the whole process. This gave rise to discussions about how to ensure that all team members can be fully involved.
•      The selection of what to write about. The teams discovered that their projects have a broad scope and that there are many things they can write about. This makes it difficult to select just one topic to focus on, and led participants to talk about their “unique selling points”, the things that make their projects particularly interesting to others. “Becoming aware of the points that make us special was perhaps the most important result of the process”.
•     Gathering more information. It is not possible for the teams to come up with all the details of a project during one workshop, so access to old reports and other sources of information is vital. It is even more important to go into the field and interview stakeholders. Team members recognised that “it does not come naturally to deliberately capture information”, and also reflected on the advantages of having colleagues in the field who can be very helpful sources of information and contacts. We looked at the many advantages of using simple technologies such as low-cost video cameras, which can help to record opinions that can be used later.
•     The importance of analysis. Apart from describing the project, it is vital to provide an analysis, giving an opinion and saying why were things the way they were. This is not always easy: on the one hand, “we are not used to expressing negative things…”. On the other, participants had difficulties in coming up with criteria and indicators. This problem was addressed by referring back to the most commonly discussed aspects of the projects (e.g. their overall performance, the environmental impact, the potential sustainability of their project).
•     Presenting the results. Presenting the information and opinions gathered is an essential part of the process. A key issue here is to select a specific format (e.g. an article, book or poster). We discussed the importance of considering that (i) the selected format will largely depend on the target audience, (ii) every type of format can be “filled” with the information collected, and that (iii) whatever the format, it has to contain an analysis.

Although none of the teams have yet been able to complete the exercise that they started in January, this process has been referred to as an “effective catalyst”. One of them made a brochure, another one a video, a third one made a PowerPoint presentation shared with a large group in Congress, and someone else wrote an article for the IFAD Newsletter. The teams are now busy with “customisation”: adapting the information and opinions gathered to different audiences.

Taking it further

One of the main issues discussed was how to maintain the momentum of the whole process, and the steps needed to ensure that these efforts continue. Participants discussed budgets, time, support, and the challenge of “making this part of our daily activities”. They also considered how to improve any future training in documentation processes.

It was felt that the facilitators should have more information about the projects and participants before starting the process. It would also be useful to begin to identify what is to be documented before the actual training workshops begin. A documentation process does not need to start from scratch: there is always something already written down. The process might well have been more effective if it had built upon documents that the teams had already produced.

Future trainings should also assign enough time for a field visit. The final recommendation was that future workshops should include a session dedicated to briefing project directors and other key IFAD staff in order to ensure and strengthen their support for this work.

Text: Ann Turinayo and Jorge Chavez-Tafur

Ann Turinayo (a.turinayo@ifad.org) works as the Knowledge Management and Communications Officer for IFAD in Uganda. Jorge Chavez-Tafur (j.chavez-tafur@ileia.org) was part of the process facilitation team.

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If there is one thing that the world food crisis has shown us it is that heavily relying on global food markets can be dangerous – especially for the urban areas and where households rely on imported food.

This is a strong argument in favour of strengthening local and regional food systems. These are characterised by fewer intermediaries, lower transportation costs and more personal forms of exchange, resulting in less risky transactions.

Producers and consumers can exert a greater degree of control, allowing for quantities and prices to be negotiated locally, and for more value to remain within the region. Moreover, proponents of regional food systems argue that this contributes to increased food security, benefits the environment and increases the autonomy of farmers.

Regional food systems, however, run against the dominant paradigm that sees global markets and modern technologies as the way forward in agriculture. And they also run against another paradigm: one that considers global food security mainly in terms of the quantity of food available. But addressing hunger and malnutrition is not just about calories. It is about the quality of the diet, which inherently means variety. In many parts of the world, regional food systems used to provide a large variety of local grains, tubers, pulses, green leaves, wild fruits and berries, meat and fish. Today, much of that diversity has gone.

We invite you to share your experiences in strengthening local and regional food systems. How to create the conditions that can support their development? What role can farmers, consumers, farmer organisations, the private sector, field technicians, government programmes and the media play to (re)create regional food systems? How do they contribute to improved food and nutrition security? We will examine initiatives taking place and ask what farmers and consumers think about them and what lessons we can draw from them.

We welcome your suggestions and contributions as articles, photographs, contacts of people you think have expertise in this area or ideas for other topics you think we should address. Please write to Jorge Chavez-Tafur, editor, before June 1st, 2011. E-mail j.chavez-tafur@ileia.org

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He farms the same land that his father farmed for many years, and his grandfather before him, but the few innovations which Mr Duya has introduced have brought about big changes. “We grafted some mango trees, and now they produce much more”. He has planted trees along the contours of his farm, and some have already provided timber.

He has also designed a detailed crop-rotation scheme and successfully combines different crops so as to make the most of the limited space and available water. Naturally, there are some difficulties, the largest of which is marketing his products. Without a strong farmer organisation in this area, middlemen pay very low prices for the vegetables.

But in spite of these problems, “this is a profitable business”, and one that makes Mr Duya very proud. Logically, he expects his children to farm this same land in the future. “Farming is good, but they have first to complete their school. Just as I’ve made some improvements, they will then be able to take this farm to another level”.

Text: Jorge Chavez-Tafur

Photo: Susan Mwangi

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The World Rural Forum is behind the campaign to get the United Nations to declare an International Year of Family Farming. This campaign is now supported by more than 300 civil society organisations from all over the world, and by the Ministries of Agriculture in Pakistan, Switzerland, Peru, El Salvador and Belize. Jose Antonio Osaba is the co-ordinator of this campaign.
José Antonio Osaba was born in Cuba, and has worked with several development organisations there, in France and in Spain. For the last eight years he has been working with the World Rural Forum, a non-profit organisation which aims at building stronger linkages between all those working in rural areas.

Why start a campaign for an International Year of Family Farming?

If we look at the world’s agricultural sector, and at the environment, we see two major options: industrial agriculture, which nowadays employs 20 million people, or family farming, which if properly supported can support hundreds of millions of women and men farmers. We believe that family farming, which is rooted in the strong links between a piece of land and the family that owns and works it, can feed the world in a sustainable and ecological manner, and that it can be a very significant instrument to overcome hunger and poverty. But most countries give less than seven percent of their national budget to agriculture, even those where up to 70 percent of the population lives in the rural areas.
As a result, millions of women and men smallholders are practically abandoned. So one of the main aims of this campaign is to promote national policies that will provide the necessary support and recognise that rural development and agriculture are keys to addressing the problems these countries face. At the World Rural Forum we have been working with regional issues, but a worldwide campaign fits our own identity better. As an international organisation we recognise that, all over the world, smallholders, and family farming, are in trouble. We have 300 organisations now supporting the campaign, which shows we are on the right track.

When do you expect that the year will be proclaimed? Which year will it be?

Our aim is to try to get the declaration either at the end of 2010, or during 2011. This is something related to the way the UN and its General Assembly works, so we need to get the official support of many governments. Once the UN declares the year, it will not be immediately implemented, as the UN then has to ask a specialised agency like FAO to develop the programme. So we think that the International Year of Family Farming will be 2012, or perhaps 2013. We are working hard to get this approval. We have to be confident, even though it is really a challenge. That is why we rely on all our supporting organisations and on their efforts.

At the moment we are celebrating the year of biodiversity. Does declaring such a year really make a difference?

This is a key question. We feel that if the year is declared from above, its impact won’t be so meaningful, or won’t go beyond some articles and some references. But we are working with 300 organisations in 56 countries, and that makes a big difference; so many rural organisations are getting mobilised that the campaign now has a real social dimension. And we aim at more than just having a year declared. Right now we are pushing for the declaration of the year. Once that happens it will give us the opportunity to discuss, to exchange opinions, and to organise dialogues and debates. That’s when we’ll really be busy; one year will provide many opportunities. Let us first get the year, and then we will try to push governments to implement better policies. That’s where we will be very active, and that’s what’s going to make the difference.

So at the end of the day you expect governments to implement better policies, or policies that will better support smallscale farmers. Is this needed everywhere? Is there an example to follow?

Well, the situation is certainly not the same everywhere, but as a rule, we see that very few countries have proper policies towards small-scale farmers and family farming. Even in Europe, in spite of the subsidies, farmers face many difficulties. But there are positive examples. There is the case of Malawi, a very small country where policies to support farmers have been introduced, and as result the country is even exporting food.
Malawi is showing the way, providing more attention and more resources. This contrasts those countries which implemented the freetrade policies, and which now have to import almost 70 percent of the food they need. Not all countries are doing so badly, but there are problems virtually everywhere. There is a big controversy about the model of agriculture the world should follow and about the type of products are we getting. Should agriculture become more and more business-oriented, or should it aim at feeding the world?
The declaration of the year will be a great asset in this controversy. Nowadays there is much criticism of family farming, with people saying that it belongs to the past. By declaring the year, the UN will give legitimacy to family farming.

But we are supposed to get better policies and, as you say, there are very few examples to follow. How are we going to get there?

This is why it is important to be very active during the year. We are preparing a plan, based on the establishment of national committees. And in each case, civil society is to push for more resources, for improving roads, markets, access to irrigation or inputs. We really have to look at many different aspects. The issues will not be the same in every country, although there are some issues which are especially important and which all committees will consider. One of these issues is land. We have to get clear laws respecting the right of farmers to own land.
Another issue is getting equal rights for men and women. These are two of the main aspects on which we will focus. We know it is going to be difficult and we don’t pretend that we are going to solve all problems forever, but we can make a difference by working with the media, strengthening the links between urban and rural people, or by reaching out to consumers’ associations. There’s a lot to be done, but we are motivated to do it.

Talking about consumers, many efforts aim to link family farmers with global markets, but if we listen to the IAASTD report, for example, we should take a completely different approach. Isn’t there a contradiction?

This is a serious challenge, but our starting point is clear: we need food security. The first commitment of a government should be to feed its own people. We believe in national production and national markets. International markets get too much attention, while we think that national or regional markets should be encouraged as a way of supporting rural areas and tackling issues such as hunger and poverty.

With so many platforms, or networks trying to support family farmers, don’t you think that there is some sort of duplication of efforts, or that you can be less efficient?

We would like to be seen as an umbrella, under which everybody can have some space. We are just establishing the instrument, or the mechanism that will allow the most important issues to be at the top of the international agenda. Of course, working with 300 organisations can be difficult. But we are in touch with them all the time, sharing documents, sharing experiences and receiving suggestions. And we have established an intermediary level for every continent.
We have just had a continental meeting in Asia, with all the organisations supporting the campaign, and are planning similar meetings in Africa, America and Europe. Every continental meeting is also an opportunity to get to know each other, establish new links. Many organisations have got in touch with each other through the campaign, so it is already serving as a meeting point.

I ask you this because of what we saw not so long ago in Copenhagen. Having so many countries and organisations represented, with their own interests and agendas, led to a declaration that does not say very much. Are you not afraid of something similar?

This has been seen many times. Three or four days, with everybody there, all raising their issues, bringing their questions, but at the end you go home with empty hands. We are not promoting a particular event, we are promoting a full year. It is not just one extraordinary meeting for one day in Rome or Nairobi, but 365 days to promote farmers’ issues, justice and better policies.
Huge international conferences are fine, but our strategy is different. We are hoping for a full year, in which civil society can work at the national level. Let us say that there are 200 countries, so we have 200 opportunities, 200 different situations. We are not talking about one global declaration, but rather helping national organisations to confront the challenges they face and articulate their aspirations. These will differ from Burkina Faso to El Salvador, from Thailand to Canada, and Argentina to Mali. We are only coordinating the campaign.

Is it not very ambitious

Well, with e-mail and the Internet we can address 600 or 700 organisations in a few minutes, and share information, proposals or ideas quite easily. Still, yes, it is ambitious, but our ambition matches the size of the problem. The problems in rural areas are huge, so our ambition should also be huge. Our challenge is to be effective, to be able to mobilise resources and to be heard by the international organisations we are in touch with. But we are proud of the results so far. The meeting in Asia was a big success, and now we are preparing the other ones. By the end of 2010, when the four continents are ready with the continental meetings, we will set up the World Consultative Committee, which will help us guide all the activities to take place during the year.

So if the campaign is on track, and is going on quite well, how can the readers of our magazine contribute?

The many good practices and experiences shared in all issues of your magazine represent a very significant contribution to family farming. But readers can also contribute in many ways. Their associations can join the campaign, they can also send their articles, their experiences or their opinions to us, and we can share them with all those involved in this campaign. And once the year is proclaimed, or declared, they should join efforts with the organisations involved at a national level. These are all very ambitious efforts, so we would not just like people to say, “ok, go ahead”. We prefer them instead to say “ok, let us go ahead together”.

Photo and interview done by: Jorge Chavez-Tafur

More information
Visit the site of the International Year of Family Farming Campaign at www.familyfarmingcampaign.net. Readers are also invited to contact Jose Osaba and the World Rural Forum, and to share their opinions and ideas at wrfsecretary[at]ruralforum.net.

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