Agricultural Administration最新文献

The roles of planning and managing rural development projects have been the subject of many books and articles over the past decade. Some of the literature in this field has been in the domain of information gathering for rural development planning. Most studies, and prescriptions offered, tend to be ad hoc in nature. In this paper, an assessment is made of the prospects for a systematic approach to information gathering for rural development projects in less developed countries, based on the use of management information systems commonly associated with large Western commercial institutions.

Agricultural research systems can be a key element in the transformation and modernization of LDC agricultural sectors. International research organizations can effectively complement those within LDCs. However, in the absence of adequately administered agricultural research/innovative systems within a country and appropriate linkages between national and international research systems, an LDC is likely to obtain few benefits from international research. Institutions like IRRI and CIMMYT have played a useful role in transferring technology to Bangladesh in the three phases of material transfer, design transfer and capacity transfer. Yet organizational difficulties, low research intensities and inadequate linkages between research, extension and farmers within Bangladesh are major deficiencies. These lead to inefficiency in research resource allocation and the transmission of research results both within Bangladesh and from international sources. A number of reforms in the administration of agricultural research in Bangladesh seems desirable as a means towards greater economic benefits, even though a rational comprehensive approach seems impractical and probably undesirable.

Close farmer contact is a vital element in livestock component farming systems research in Java. Slow progress so far in livestock development may be partly associated with practical difficulties in achieving the degree of farmer contact needed in livestock research, while working mainly with male stock-rearers. Most men rearers in Java spend most daylight hours working away from home and their stock, and feel too busy to become involved in trials of new livestock technology.

The advantages of involving women in village livestock research include ease of communication during daylight working hours, interest amongst women (and some training) in nutrition, health and reproduction, and the ability of women to manage animals in farm trials requiring constant supervision. In some villages women are already involved in group activities, which can form a ready basis for the communication of ideas on livestock improvement.

The potential for improving productivity of Javanese livestock has been demonstrated under research station conditions, yet little improvement in village livestock production has been achieved. One approach to increasing progress in livestock development could be to promote research which involves women rearers or the wives of rearers. This may require special efforts to encourage women scientists to work in villages.

Agriculture is the most important sector in the Nigerian economy after oil. Food production, however, has failed to keep pace with population growth, and with the fall in oil prices the country has been forced into a programme of austerity. A series of agricultural development programmes which were started in the mid-1970s, attempted to lay the foundation for increased food production, and the Food Production Plan formulated in 1980 set out a coordinated strategy for at least narrowing the ‘food gap’ over a five-year period.

The importance of monitoring and evaluating agricultural programmes in Nigeria has been stressed from the outset, but in spite of the massive resources devoted to this effort it has not proved possible to devise an effective means of measuring incremental crop production. There are many reasons for this: in part it is due to the complexity of the agricultural production system, the effect of exogenous variables and the initial weak data base. However, the survey approach, particularly in the early period, was inappropriate. The projects themselves have not been an unqualified success, and the main fault lies in the failure to create adequate institutional linkages with government agencies to ensure continuity of the development process. The Nigerian Government and the principal external funding agency, the World Bank, have recognised this problem and a new ‘agricultural sector’ approach is now being adopted.

This has presented monitoring and evaluation practitioners with a new challenge to devise a more cost-effective means of collecting and disseminating information on key parameters, particularly food production, and to achieve the correct balance between the needs of management for ‘monitoring’ information and the longer term ‘evaluation’ requirements. There is a need, therefore, to reappraise the methods employed in the estimation of food production, and new techniques such as low-level aerial photography which have shown promise should be further tested. Finally, some measure of well-being in the target groups needs to be developed over and above the estimation of physical crop production increases.

The assumptions of farming systems research and development (FSR/D) are similar to those of the alternative technology movement (ATM). While FSR/D can be a useful research method, it is doubtful if it will succeed as a development strategy where the Green Revolution failed. Much of the criticism of ATM is applicable to FSR/D. This criticism is based upon the eventual tendency of markets to expropriate much of the value created by the introduction of alternative technologies. Other critiques include the implicit technological determinism of FSR as a development strategy and the tendency of FSR advocates to ignore macro-economic and social structures that limit ‘bottom-up’ development efforts.

Foreign advisors and donor agencies often recommend change in land tenure as an important component of African rural development. These recommendations are founded on experience in developed nations as interpreted both by capitalist and by socialist paradigms. The considerable African experience with land reform displays fundamental divergence from these paradigms, resulting both from the unique institutional composition existing in Africa and from the present relationship of Africa to the rest of the world. Tenure systems have shown greater flexibility than is generally acknowledged, suggesting that efforts to strengthen agricultural performance should not focus on these systems as a constraint to development.