70 The Global Food System
several external individuals and agencies) had already led to the development of a
producers’ cooperative. The community’s location close to markets, its strong lead-
ers, and opportunities for producing organic coffee all contributed to further suc-
cess and particular interest in LEIT. The project played an important role in
supporting this activity, but we can expect such a confluence of favourable circum-
stances in only a minority of cases.
The conclusion that the projects did not make the contributions to human
and social capital that some LEIT advocates envision should not, of course, be
taken as the final word on the subject. Identifying changes in individual or organ-
izational capacity is not straightforward, and more innovative research methods
may be developed to investigate this issue. But at this point we should be sceptical
of any claims made on the basis of anecdotal evidence, and descriptions of project
merry-go-rounds should not be taken as demonstrations of sustainable local capac-
ity. In addition, just as the distributive implications of the technology require
investigation, biases inherent in project strategies must be addressed. For instance,
Gugerty and Kremer (2002) argue that some bottom-up rural development
projects organized through groups may offer more opportunities for resource cap-
ture by an elite than do traditional top-down activities.
Effective promotion of LEIT
These results have implications for the way that LEIT is promoted. First, it is nec-
essary to address the fact that LEIT does not necessarily reach the poorest farming
households. A cogent criticism of some of the early support for the Green Revolu-
tion focused on the unreasonable expectation that technology could effectively
redress inequalities in access to resources. The seed-fertilizer technology did not do
this, and neither does LEIT. Place et al (2002, p281) conclude that natural resource
management technologies, ‘like agricultural technologies more generally, fail to be
adopted by women farmers and poor farmers at the same rate as male farmers who
enjoy greater wealth, education and socio-economic power’. Careful targeting and
extra resources to include the poor in project activities may help redress these
imbalances, but such strategies do not obviate the need for a much more realistic
assessment of rural livelihoods. There are many so-called farming households that
depend only marginally on agricultural activities. Their plight deserves particular
attention, and solutions may include political reform that provides more equitable
resource distribution, development of rural infrastructure and services, identifica-
tion of alternative opportunities for rural labour and enterprise, and effective safe-
ty-net strategies for the vulnerable. Agricultural technology is only one part of the
solution to persistent rural poverty, and technology projects must be linked with
broader rural development strategies.
LEIT (or any other technology) has a much better chance of making an impact
in situations where there is a dynamic agricultural economy. The case studies