Recognising Local Knowledge and Giving Farmers a Voice in the Policy Development Debate

Introduction

One of the aspects of poverty as currently defined is the lack of voice or the lack of empowerment and the feeling of not being able to take events into one's own hands. This aspect of poverty is difficult to quantify as yet, but it is an important element in the debate on the rural poor, deforestation and natural resource management. In this lecture note we will introduce:

• methods to collect and appraise farmers' ecological knowledge in a formal manner and analyse the way this knowledge and value system complements the moreformalised science we have discussed in other Lecture Notes;
• methods to get the views of local communities on the options they have and the constraints they face more explicitly represented, and
• ways to get the farmer's ‘voice' heard in dialogues with local and national policymakers.

Firstly, we shall give a general overview of how some processes of ‘modernisation' can affect the ways that people think about and value traditional local knowledge.

The lecturer points out that the existence and value of local knowledge is in part due to:

1. the need to target research to farmers' needs more effectively to producetechnology more appropriate to farmers;
2. the growing importance of farmer participation in defining research agendas andtechnology generation; and
3. the realisation that local knowledge is a useful resource which can becomplementary to scientific knowledge.

The lecture also covers the topic of "Landcare Groups" voluntary, self-managed "grassroots" units, formed to protect, conserve and restore the local resource base. This kind of programme provides a way to improve the way that farmer participatory research is done. Concern about the sustainability of these issues comes up in these areas:

1. the movement runs the risk of being “projectised”, i.e. attracting the support of projects that do not understand the concept, and that provide funds in a top-down, target-driven mode; this of course would defeat the object of having a farmer-led ‘bottom-up' movement.
2. in respect to long-term sustainability, networking and the stimulation from outside contacts are considered to be crucial for long-term success.
3. group leadership is a time-consuming and exhausting task, particularly when undertaken on a voluntary basis and leadership “burn-out” has raised concerns.
4. local initiative to achieve ‘Landcare' targets can lead to practices that are much less democratic.
5. local government may perceive the Landcare formula as a way of achieving its targets that are not necessarily in the best interest of all farmers.
6. the application of Landcare to differing conditions and its expansion to wider geographic scales may corrupt the process, and lead to a loss of the basic elements ofits success so far.

Click here for the paper in PDF format.