Reversals, Institutions and Change 103bastions of conservatism, doggedly reproducing narrow professionalism in their
students. Others are more open and innovative. By changing their curricula and
teaching, by rewriting their textbooks and by introducing learning from and with
farmers, universities and training institutes could help mould and transform the
values and behaviour of new generations of scientists and extensionists.
Given their influence, size and coverage, these large organizations – Interna-
tional Agricultural Research Centres, NARSs, national agricultural extension
organizations and universities and faculties – must in the longer term be trans-
formed if the gross imbalance between TOT and farmer-first is to be corrected. To
achieve this on their own, in isolation, would be difficult though. Fortunately,
three other, smaller-scale, types of organization and arrangement provide more
favourable environments for reversals and change. These are projects, NGOs and
farmers’ organizations.
Special projects, working in various combinations with NARSs, are well repre-
sented by the contributions to this book: the Agricultural Research Planning Teams
in Zambia (Kean and Singogo Lingston, 1988), the Agricultural Technology
Improvement Project in Botswana (Norman et al, 1988), the Tropsoils Project in
West Sumatra (Colfer et al, 1985), the Agricultural Research and Production
Project in Nepal (Mathema and Galt, 1987) and the Farming Systems Develop-
ment Project in the Eastern Visayas in the Philippines (Lightfoot et al, 1987;
Repulda et al, 1987). These projects combined special resources with staff who
wished to work closely with farmers, and who had the freedom to do so.
For their part, international and national NGOs have advantages. It is true that
they are scattered, of variable quality and usually small. They have also, as a whole,
tended to be weak on the technical side of agriculture and inexpert at making links
with formal agricultural research. Change, though, is rapid. In the late 1980s, many
have been shifting their priorities, staff recruitment and training towards agriculture.
NGOs have a comparative advantage, especially when they can maintain the same
good staff in the field in the same place for a number of years. Some, like World
Neighbors, the Central Mennonites Committee, the Aga Khan Rural Support Pro-
grammes, Oxfam, and Save the Childen Fund, already have a track record in farmer-
first innovation. NGOs like these find it easier than large bureaucracies to avoid the
trap of TOT, to recruit and maintain sensitive staff in the field, to be close to farmers,
to encourage their participation and to act in farmer-first roles.
Farmers’ organizations are a form of national NGO of growing significance.
They have an increasing capacity to make demands on NARSs and to influence
and sometimes even fund research. They tend, though, to represent the better-
endowed farmers and those who produce for standard large-scale markets. The
resource-poor farmers of CDR agriculture tend to be unorganized and to have
diverse needs which defy simple aggregation. For them, demand-pull will always
be weaker and the responsibility for putting their priorities first rests much more
with other NGOs and with individual professionals.
A plurality of organizations can combine to gain strength in diversity. This has
been observed in Eastern Bolivia (Thiele et al, 1988), where area-based development