Historical Analysis of the Effectiveness of AKST Systems in Promoting Innovation | 65

be taken into account in targeting the specific needs of different categories of farmers. The Training and Visit (T&V) approach is a particularly well known example of this effort (Benor et al., 1984). It was heavily supported by the World Bank and became standard practice in the majority of noncommunist developing countries. Among other aims it sought to strengthen the management of diffusion processes by selection of "contact" or "leading farmers" and in some cases also contact groups. Extension agents report back "up the line" the problems and priorities of the farmer and farmer groups that they trained during their fortnightly field visits (Benor et al., 1984). The T&V approach was criticized almost from its inception as an inadequate response to the widespread evidence of the limitations of ToT approaches (Rivera and Schram, 1987; Howell, 1988; Gentil, 1989; Roberts, 1989). Little remains today of national T&V investments and service structures (Anderson et al., 2006).

     Farming systems research and extension (FSRE) is another well-known response. In this model, feedback came directly through diagnostic surveys carried out by multidisciplinary teams, by farm level interactions between researchers and farmers in the course of technology design, testing and adaptation and by the organization of farmer visits to research stations (Rhoades and Booth, 1982; Bawden, 1995; Collinson, 2000). Wide impact in this case was sought by the designation of farming systems within agroecological "recommendation domains" for which a specific technology or practice was designed to be effective and profitable. FSRE practitioners explicitly took into account the contextual conditions that might compromise the effectiveness or profitability of a problem-solution as well as sociocultural factors such as women's roles in farming. How well they managed to do so was disputed (Russell et al., 1989). FSRE produced interesting results but failed to have wide impact. Although largely abandoned as an institutional arrangement, its influence lived on (Dent and McGregor, 1994) through methodological innovations addressing the highly differentiated livelihood needs of the rural poor (Dixon and Gibbon, 2001), the stimulus it gave to revaluation of the multifunctionality of farming (Pearson and Ison, 1997) and the ways in which it forged connections across scientific disciplines that endure within the organizational arrangements of numerous research communities (Engel, 1990).

     Neither T&V nor FSRE addressed the institutional challenge of creating "the mix" of support services necessary for articulating innovation along the chain from producer to consumer (Lionberger, 1986). In the private commercial sector the production of tea, coffee, palm oil, rubber, pineapples and similar commodities in the small-scale sector typically used the core-estate-with-out-growers model to address the challenge (Chambers, 1974; Hunter et al., 1976; Compton, 1989), positioning producers under contract to supply outputs to a processing facility that provided inputs and services. The company assumed responsibility for assembling the scientific and market knowledge required as well as the technology and infrastructure for securing company profits, drawing largely on knowledge resources in the home country or from within the company's international operations. The approach provided reliable income to producers, employees and companies and through commodity

 

taxes or export levies to governments. It was criticized for locking small-scale producers into low income contracts. It also proved open to corruption when applied through government owned Commodity Boards, with profits siphoned off to intermediaries and elites (Chambers and Howe, 1979; Sinzogan et al., 2007).

     The challenge was addressed in Communist states by state seizure of the means of production and by state control of the provision of inputs and services and the distribution of the product. The scientific knowledge base to support such a high degree of planning was strong. However, the means chosen within the prevailing ideology to translate knowledge generated at the scientific level into knowledge that was effective for practice was based on command and control. Support to the knowledge processes and experiential capacity of those actually working the land-albeit under direction of others-was not encouraged. In the exceptional historical experiences of states such as Cuba (Carney, 1993; Wright, 2005) or Vietnam state-directed knowledge processes contributed to basic food security but in general the command and control approach did not prove efficient in generating surplus nor a continuing stream of innovation in agriculture and became a source of vulnerability for state survival (Gao and Li, 2006). Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the command and control model has been largely abandoned.

     A parallel wave of innovation in the organizational design of knowledge processes was centered in producers' own capacity to engage in "knowledge work" and on the role of local organizations in meeting development and sustainability goals (Chambers and Howes, 1979; Chambers, 1981). Models for what became known as Farmer Participatory Research and Extension (FPRE) were elaborated in practice by drawing on local traditions of association, knowledge generation and communication. Experience generated under labels such as Participatory Learning and Action Research, Farmer Research Circles, Community Forestry, Participatory Technology Development and FAO's People's Participation Program (Haverkort et al., 1991; Scoones and Thompson, 1994; Ashby, 2003; Coutts et al., 2005; IIRR, 2005) showed that if time is taken to create effective and honest partnerships in FPRE the results are significant and can offer new opportunities to socially marginalized communities and those excluded under other knowledge arrangements. They share a number of generic features viz. learner-centered, place dependent, ecologically informed and use of interactive communication and of facilitation rather than extension skills (Chambers and Ghildyal, 1985; Ashby, 1986; Farrington and Martin, 1987; Gamser, 1988; Biggs, 1989; Haverkort et al., 1991; Ashby, 2003). Science and off-the-shelf technologies are positioned as stores of knowledge and as specialized problem-solving capacities that can be called upon as needed. An FPRE approach has been used for example in the development and promotion of on-farm multipurpose tree species in Kenya (Buck, 1990) that had wide-scale impact and complemented the mobilization of women in tree-planting under the Green Belt movement (Budd et al., 1990).The development and promotion through farmer-to-farmer communication and training of a range of soil fertility and erosion control techniques in Central America similarly was based on an FPRE approach