106 Participatory Processes
Finally, for professionals to innovate by working in the farmer-first mode
demands vision and leadership on the part of those with power and responsibility.
These include senior officials in capital cities, vice-chancellors and deans, directors
of research stations, leaders of teams and senior staff in regional, provincial and
district headquarters, as well as in aid agencies and NGOs. Leaders can act like
normal professionals and normal bureaucrats who simplify, standardize and stifle;
or they can break out and encourage and support initiative and change, providing
resources and room for manoeuvre for those under their management who have
the aptitude and will to work in new participatory ways; and they can reorganize
departments, procedures and management information systems so that searches
can be made to meet farmers’ demands and fill their basket with choices.
Alliances and mutual support also help. Those who see or sense the potential
will do well to seek out and support like-minded fellow professionals in their own
and other organizations. Shared ideas and experiences speed up learning. If those
in this book provide stimulus and encouragement, they will have served their pur-
pose. And if the new paradigm fulfils its promise, and is accepted and practiced
much more in the 1990s and the 21st century, then those who take risks now to
support, develop and spread it will not have acted in vain.
For the stakes are high. Over a billion people are supported by the third agri-
culture. The challenge is to enable many of the poorer among them to secure bet-
ter and more sustainable livelihoods from their complex, diverse and risk-prone
farming when normal agricultural research has so largely failed. This book points
to new potentials. It shows that reversals in the farmer-first mode can be effective
for farmers and exciting for professionals. A quiet revolution has already started,
but it is scattered and still small scale. Which countries, institutions and individu-
als will now lead remains to be seen. Change depends on personal decisions and
action. Those who now explore the frontiers of farmer participation cannot expect
Nobel prizes, or be confident of early recognition or promotion; but they will be
joining a vanguard. Their rewards, more surely, will be the exhilaration of pioneer-
ing, the satisfaction of seeing innovations spread and the knowledge that through
their work, poor farm families are being truly served.
References
Abedin M Z and Haque M F. 1987. Learning from farmer innovations and innovator workshops.
Paper presented at IDS Workshop on Farmers and Agricultural Research: Complementary Meth-
ods, 26–31 July. IDS, University of Sussex, Brighton
Ashby J A, Quiros C A and Rivera Y M. 1987. Farmer participation in on-farm varietal trials. Paper
presented at IDS Workshop on Farmers and Agricultural Research: Complementary Methods,
26–31 July. IDS, University of Sussex, Brighton. Available in full as ODI Agricultural Adminis-
tration (Research and Extension) Network Discussion Paper 22, December 1987
Box L. 1987. Experimenting cultivators. Paper presented at IDS Workshop on Farmers and Agricultural
Research: Complementary Methods, 26–31 July. IDS, University of Sussex, Brighton. Available in