Reversals, Institutions and Change 97Farmers’ experiments are, then, encouraged and supported by outsiders. This
is close to Biggs’ collegiate mode of farmer–scientist interaction. Farmers take part
in design (Fernandez and Salvatierra, 1987), determine management conditions
and implement and evaluate the experiments. They ‘own’ the experiments and the
outsiders provide support and advice.
Evaluation of experiments is also by farmers and continuous. An authoritative
World Bank publication (Casley and Kumar, 1987, p116) has pointed out that it
is often assumed that illiterate, tradition-bound farmers cannot assess the dynam-
ics of change, but that their knowledge and judgments are in many instances more
accurate than those of project staff. One of D. M. Maurya’s criteria for assessing a
line given to a farmer to try is whether other farmers ask for seed (personal com-
munication). It is farmers’ judgements, interest and adoption that count.
Stimulating, servicing and supporting these farmers’ activities – analysis, choice
and experiment – requires reversals of normal and expected roles on the part of
outsiders, be they scientists, extensionists or workers in NGOs. This does not
mean that they have to be purely passive catalysts. It would be as absurd for their
ideas and knowledge not to be brought into play, as it has been for those of farmers
to be neglected. In raising questions, in providing tools for analysis, in presenting
what they already know to be feasible and available choices, and in supporting and
advising on farmers’ experiments, they have a part to play. But their role is not that
of teacher, of the bearer of superior modern technology, of the person who knows
what is good for others better than they know for themselves. It is neither the role
of traditional agricultural extension, nor that of normal agricultural science. An
open, learning process approach is indicated, of a sort encouraged neither by the
content of university curricula nor by the hierarchy and style of government
bureaucracies.
For these changes and reversals of role to occur on any scale is not easy. It
requires resolute changes in institutions, in incentives and in methods and interac-
tions.
Institutional Change
Unfortunately, normal bureaucracy tends to centralize, standardize and simplify,
and agricultural research and extension are no exceptions. They fit badly, therefore,
with the conditions of resource-poor farm families, with their geographical scatter,
heterogeneity and complexity within any farm and farm household. In resource-
rich areas of industrial and Green Revolution agriculture, production has been
raised through packages, with the environment managed and controlled to fit the
genotype. The third agriculture, being complex, diverse and risk-prone, requires
the reverse, with searches for genotypes to fit environments. In industrial and
Green Revolution agriculture, higher production has come from intensification of
inputs and simplification and standardization of practices; in the third agriculture,