19
Ways Forward? Technical Choices,
Intervention Strategies and Policy
Options
Camilla Toulmin and Ian Scoones
Introduction
This book has emphasized the importance of taking local contexts seriously. The case
studies have revealed the importance of dynamics and diversity in all farming settings
across all three countries. Some of the key findings are summarized below.
- Farmers have criteria for classifying soils, such as their workability, inherent
fertility, suitability for certain crops, responsiveness to particular inputs and
water-holding capacity. Farmers actively manage their soils in ways that build
on these characteristics with the aim, over time, of thus improving their value
for crop production. - Africa’s farming systems are highly diverse. This diversity is an important fea-
ture at all scales. At household level, farmers manage this diversity by different
land use practices, choice of crop and input levels. Diversity at the level of the
village landscape is exploited through use, for example, of low-lying areas (var-
iously known in the study areas as bas fonds, vleis, dambos), for moisture-loving
crops, upland sands for millets and groundnuts, and gravelly slopes for grazing
and woodland. Farmers value such diversity since it provides greater protection
against the risk of crop failure. Diversity at national level is seen in the differ-
ential development of areas considered of high and low potential, infrastruc-
tural investment and ease of access to important markets. - Farming systems are dynamic, responding to a range of internal and external
pressures. Reliance on data from nutrient balances provides only a snapshot at
one point in time, from which the direction and evolution of the farming sys-
tem in question are hard to determine. There is no single pathway being fol-
lowed by all farmers in a given site, but rather an array of directions being
Reprinted from Toulmin C and Scoones I. 2001. Ways forward? Technical choices, intervention strat-
egies and policy options. In Scoones I (ed) Dynamics and Diversity, Earthscan, London, pp176–208.