Farmer participatory research: A review of concepts and recent fieldwork

Agricultural production in difficult areas faces multiple constraints, requiring intervention at several levels. It is argued here, on grounds of production and equity, that technology development is an important component of the necessary set of interventions. However, conventional ‘technology transfer’ strategies of R & D work poorly in complex and highly variable environments. As an alternative, much work has recently been undertaken on participatory, problem-oriented approaches. These innovations and their underlying concepts are reviewed here, and their potential and constraints highlighted. Participatory research tends to focus initially on small numbers of clients. It is therefore more expensive per client than the technology transfer approach, but much more effective. Two questions need to be addressed in future work: how the costs of research can be spread over a larger number of clients without loss of effectiveness, and to what extent flexible, participatory approaches can be incorporated into the work programmes of national agricultural research services.