Friday, June 09, 2006
technologie transfer
Technology and Society | http://www.itdg.org
A top-down agricultural reform programme in Indonesia turns into a bottom-up movement for political accountability and agricultural change.
The brown plant hopper on the Indonesian rice harvest of 1986 forced the national government to introduce a strategy that moved away from pesticide use towards methods of pest control based on combining external expertise with the farmers' own knowledge of their fields. A co-operative programme between the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Indonesian government centred on Farmer Field Schools (FFS)... The Schools also aimed to support and develop farmers' expertise in their own fields, enabling them to replace their reliance on external inputs such as pesticides with indigenous skills, knowledge and resources. Over time the emphasis of the programme shifted towards community organisation and planning of integrated pest management, and became known as Community IPM. Farmer Field Schools has spread to more than one million rice farmers in Indonesia. It might be expected that such 'scaling up' of a successful practice could only occur via a shift in policy by national policy-makers, followed by incentives for farmers to change their practices. However, one of the key lessons from Indonesia, a country with a fragile democratic system that did not allow public meetings of any kind, is the extent to which Schools of 20 and more people were initially allowed and then gradually organised into farmers' unions, which forced a reluctant government to change not only agricultural but other policies related to rural technologies, livelihoods and governance. Farmer groups and associations have now developed their own organisational and advocacy functions, and so are able to bring about pro-farmer policy changes at national and local government level.
A top-down agricultural reform programme in Indonesia turns into a bottom-up movement for political accountability and agricultural change.
The brown plant hopper on the Indonesian rice harvest of 1986 forced the national government to introduce a strategy that moved away from pesticide use towards methods of pest control based on combining external expertise with the farmers' own knowledge of their fields. A co-operative programme between the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Indonesian government centred on Farmer Field Schools (FFS)... The Schools also aimed to support and develop farmers' expertise in their own fields, enabling them to replace their reliance on external inputs such as pesticides with indigenous skills, knowledge and resources. Over time the emphasis of the programme shifted towards community organisation and planning of integrated pest management, and became known as Community IPM. Farmer Field Schools has spread to more than one million rice farmers in Indonesia. It might be expected that such 'scaling up' of a successful practice could only occur via a shift in policy by national policy-makers, followed by incentives for farmers to change their practices. However, one of the key lessons from Indonesia, a country with a fragile democratic system that did not allow public meetings of any kind, is the extent to which Schools of 20 and more people were initially allowed and then gradually organised into farmers' unions, which forced a reluctant government to change not only agricultural but other policies related to rural technologies, livelihoods and governance. Farmer groups and associations have now developed their own organisational and advocacy functions, and so are able to bring about pro-farmer policy changes at national and local government level.
# posted by economy class @ 1:32 AM 
