Ways Forward? Technical Choices, Intervention Strategies and Policy Options 377Agricole, or the presence of an NGO field project. Despite this neglect, farmers
outside the main cash-crop zones have made very considerable changes to their
cropping systems – taking up new varieties, adopting ox-drawn ploughs and
experimenting with inorganic fertilizer – based on their own capacity to learn,
experiment and share lessons. While earlier research focused on the development
of technical packages for farmers based on inorganic fertilizer, much greater effort
has been made in the CMDT area over the last ten years to promote more sustain-
able management of soils. This is being done by work on anti-erosion measures
combined with better use of organic materials such as crop residues and manure.
Private sources of extension advice and input supply are also growing, related to
particular crops being cultivated under contract to a commercial buyer. Thus, for
example, in the Office du Niger, irrigated tomatoes are being grown in the dry
season for a canning factory, with seed, other inputs and advice being supplied to
the farmers by the buyer.
In Zimbabwe, government policy towards agricultural research and extension
switched from a concentration on the large-scale commercial farming sector to
smallholders following independence in 1980. However, this transition has not
been easy. The available technologies and the style of research which predominates
in the Department of Research and Specialist Services (DRSS) of the Ministry of
Agriculture has resulted in a relatively limited uptake of research results in the
communal areas. This problem has been compounded by continuing budget cuts,
particularly in the period following structural adjustment. This has limited the
ability of station-based researchers to get to the field and interact with farmers.
Nevertheless a number of project-based initiatives have in recent years started a
more farmer-focused approach to agricultural research. The Farming Systems
Research Unit (FSRU) in DRSS, for example, has developed a farmer-led partici-
patory research approach in Chivi and Mangwende, with many experiments
focused on soil-fertility issues. This has been complemented by more technical
research both within DRSS and at the University of Zimbabwe supported by the
Rockefeller Foundation-funded SoilFertNet. The result has been the exploration
of a range of technologies and management practices which are more in line with
farmer demands, and, in some instances, a quite rapid uptake of new practices.
In Zimbabwe, the links between research and extension have been relatively
weak, except through more informal contacts at the local level. Agricultural exten-
sion, run by the Ministry of Agriculture department Agritex, has been hit by simi-
lar budget cuts as research. This has meant a decline in extension coverage over the
1990s, particularly as a result of reduced mobility due to mileage restrictions. In
rethinking the role of extension in the country, a number of important lessons
have been drawn from past experience. First, the top-down technology driven
package approach which has dominated Zimbabwean extension support since the
1930s has been criticized as not really addressing farmer demands. Second, the high
costs of broad field-level extension coverage (with the aim of having an extension
worker in every ward) have been seen to be unfeasible given government budget
limitations. In particular, the training-and-visit approach, originally recommended