Performance of Low External Input Technology in Agricultural Development 71clearly showed that farmers engaged in commercial agriculture were more likely to
take advantage of LEIT, and that those with fewer agricultural opportunities were
in danger of neglecting farm stewardship, in some cases actually depending more
heavily on external inputs such as pesticides. There are many instances where the
use of LEIT is preferable to dependence on purchased inputs, and LEIT can make
an indispensable contribution to farm management. The environmental motiva-
tions behind the promotion of LEIT remain valid, but these are rarely the princi-
pal factors in farmers’ decision making. An approach that provides farmers with a
wide range of opinion, information and options would seem, in the long run, a
more productive strategy than one that insists on a fairly narrow ideological stance.
It is possible to dismiss the notion that LEIT represents some kind of separate
technological realm that automatically brings with it altered incentives and atti-
tudes for farming but at the same time acknowledge the importance of developing
a more thoughtful and varied use of local resources and knowledge. To insist that
LEIT stands apart (as a minority of its practitioners do) is inefficient and unrealis-
tic.
How can the lessons, techniques and motivations that characterize the best
work in LEIT be promoted? The problem is often discussed in the context of the
high per-participant costs of successful projects, and the usual policy prescription
is scaling up. But given that any intensive local-level endeavour involves consider-
able start-up costs, and taking into account the fact that many LEIT projects are
limited in breadth and focus, the search should be for economies of scope rather
than scale. That is, the emphasis should be on establishing modalities through
which farmers have access to a sustainable source of information and support for
broad agricultural innovation rather than being subject to a series of projects, each
one concentrating on a few specific technologies and often covering a relatively
limited number of communities. Each project may have a separate focus and
unique methodological preferences that militate against wider application. It
should not be surprising that this strategy rarely results in the development of
human and social capital.
Although it is fashionable to talk about offering farmers ‘a basket of choices’,
the baskets developed by many LEIT projects are unacceptably limited. Attention
to agricultural sustainability has highlighted the dangers of conventional agricul-
tural technology simplifying farming systems and relying on a narrow range of
options, lowering diversity and resilience. But efforts in LEIT are also subject to
faddism and uniformity. Methodological uniformity is also a problem, as in the
rush to organize farmer field schools for almost every subject imaginable. There is
also a need to build further technical competence. NGOs can offer support for
farmer organization, advocacy and local technology testing and adaptation, but
something as complex as LEIT is not effectively promoted by well-meaning but
inexperienced generalists.
The project approach to LEIT involves unrealistic assumptions about the pos-
sibilities of engineering local innovations and too little attention to building under-
lying capacity. There are very strong justifications for encouraging the emergence