Agricultural Administration and Extension最新文献

Black Moorish communities in Southern Mauritania have enthusiastically embraced the recent introduction of irrigation schemes. Coward's organisational model of irrigation systems is used to investigate the management of Moorish schemes, and to compare it with that of the Halpulaar schemes along the River Senegal. In contrast to the Halpulaar case, the management of Moorish schemes is found to be poor. It is argued that this is due to certain social constraints in Moorish society which counteract the efficient management of the schemes. Therefore, more attention needs to be paid to the impact of traditional social patterns on the reception of development projects.

Underinvestment is a problem common to most agricultural institutions. This paper reviews the history of the Minnesota agricultural research system in order to outline possible methods which might help other research systems to build political support for investment in public agricultural research. The paper reviews the growth of Minnesota research institutions and their budgets, looks at the economic benefits derived from the research system, discusses the means through which the experiment station developed political support for its budget, and finally, discusses recent efforts to generate more support.

The major lessons are: (1) research institutions have to invest a substantial amount of time and money in generating political support for research; (2) the activities necessary to build such support include not only effective research programs, but also the capacity to publicize the results and to organize clientele into effective lobbyists for research; and (3) certain structures, such as the close integration of research and extension, the decentralization of research into branch stations, and advisory boards for the experiment stations, can be very helpful in mobilizing support.

In the face of statistics indicating that 40 per cent of the Indian population still lives below the official poverty line, the Government of India has placed increasing reliance on credit as an instrument for the creation of new rural assets and livelihoods for the poor. A number of broadly similar schemes exist (of which the largest is the Integrated Rural Development Programme) each tailored to finance a different range of investments. They all entail organisational and financial collaboration between banks and government departments, although the nature and extent of collaboration varies considerably.

Drawing upon field-work conducted by the author in the Madurai region of Tamil Nadu, this paper compares the impact of two of the schemes and discusses the design features that explain their relative performance.

On the supply side, the chief weakness identified is a tendency towards over-supply of credit relative to real investment opportunities, arising from the institutional separation of target-fixing and borrower identification (government functions) from loan disbursement and recovery (bank functions). On the demand side, the major problem is that the initial scale of operation of most production units fostered by the schemes is too low given the existence of substantial economies of scale in capacity to bear risks.

The final section of the paper considers how these problems may be overcome. Scheme lending should be broken up into projects: with a single sponsoring agency responsible for each throughout its life. The chief role of the banks would be to appraise—and where necessary reject—project proposals submitted to them by sponsoring agencies. In place of targets, overall supply would be determined by the ability of development agencies to formulate projects acceptable to the banks.

While lending on these lines would improve the long-term development impact of credit schemes, it would also have a short-term political cost by reducing the number of borrowers who receive cheap credit. This factor and the resistance of more conservative-minded government officials are likely to be the main barriers to the proposed reforms.

At a more general level, the paper is a response to the call for a ‘more systematic and rigorous analysis of institutions and institutional environments … essential for understanding and implementing effective policy reforms of rural credit markets’.³ It illustrates how the institutional framework of credit provision may be as important as specific terms (such as inclusion of subsidy and restrictions on the end-use of loans) in determining the success or failure of particular schemes.

This paper is concerned with the search for food security in sub-Saharan Africa. Its main thesis is, since government interventions in agriculture may result in vulnerability to a food crisis, a government must therefore bear the responsibility for protecting those who become vulnerable as a consequence of its behaviour or that of other agencies operating under its auspices. Planning for food security embodies strategic behaviour which results in some degree of a dependency or vulnerability relationship between (i) producers, consumers and the government or other agencies, and (ii) government and other agencies (domestic or foreign). Therefore, proposals are made regarding (a) the framework for strategic screening of interventions in the different food-related policy areas in order to minimize vulnerability, and (b) the safeguards for ensuring that the inevitable dependency or vulnerability relationships do not degenerate into exploitation and hence sow the seeds of famine or other types of crisis.

This paper compares three approaches which have been used for providing farm management advice to co-operatives and farming groups in the Solomon Islands, Fiji and Vanuatu. Whilst each support organisation pursues similar objectives in terms of facilitating agricultural development and promoting human resource development, different priorities have been attached to realising them.

As a result there are operational differences between the three. These variations have resulted in structures and styles which have proved effective for meeting the immediate tasks facing each organisation. With regard to longer-term contributions, and particularly human resource development, three conditions are identified which could enable support organisations to realise their potential.