|
Page 2 of 5
Michael Wales, Ph.D.
Co-Chair, Global Donor Platform for Rural Development
Principal Adviser, Investment Centre, Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)
Effective farmer education through empowerment, not instructions
Nater: What’s your interpretation of donor harmonisation and alignment terminology?
Wales: In the 2003 Rome Declaration, donors agreed to harmonise policies, procedures and practices, to jointly undertake analytic work, prepare common country assistance strategies and results frameworks, and jointly review implementation. My understanding of the subsequent 2005 Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness is that, whereas ‘harmonisation’ is about procedures and processes, ‘alignment’ is about telling a government, “Well, we basically agree with your agricultural development programme and we support it, in principle.” The two need to go together.
But isn’t harmonisation and alignment about donors getting behind a country’s strategy?
Who’s to say that a harmonised approach is always necessarily correct? To me, it sounds like putting all your eggs into one basket, and hoping it’s the right one. Of course, donors do need to align their activities to country strategies and must make sure that together, their programmes are harmonised, but it’s important to recognise that there are risks. Some things that donors have pinned their faith on in the past have turned out to be a disaster.
“Extension has evolved into education, which is very different from the old T&V approach.”
Like what?
For example, for the best part of 15 years, the donors placed their trust in the ‘Training and Visit’, or T&V, extension system, only to find in the end that it had been top-down, expensive, unsustainable and somewhat less than effective. T&V was pioneered in the Indian sub-continent, mainly for irrigated cropping, where someone can say, “OK, on 15th of May we’re going to turn the water on, so plant the next day. We’ll turn it off again on 30th of June, so this is when you should have finished.” This worked in Asia, but trying to bring it to Africa, with its rain-fed conditions, was, in retrospect, a mistake. T&V extension relied on a set of simple, repetitive instructions to farmers, fed through an almost militaristic hierarchy: “Here’s the seeds, here’s the fertiliser, plant on the 15th of May. Listen! Do it!” In Africa, of course, you often don’t get the seeds or the fertiliser, or it just doesn’t rain by the 15th of May. Also, T&V wasn’t linked to markets. So that way of doing things has become largely discredited.
What is effective extension, then?
Extension has evolved into education, which is very different from the old T&V approach. The message is more nuanced. You say to the farmer, “Look, there is fertiliser, and there are hybrid seeds, and this is why they’re good. But there are these risks and problems, and when you plant should depend on the moisture levels in the soil, not the calendar.” If you’re in an area with highly unpredictable rainfall, you don’t set particular dates for action by farmers, you say, “Your best strategy is to spread your risks: plant some now, plant the rest later, and maybe fertilise only the first planting, otherwise you might lose all your money if there isn’t enough rain.“
You also broaden the training: for instance, teaching literacy to farmers means they can then use printed materials. Or educating them about HIV and AIDS will show them not just the impact on health but on their farm output, as well. And you must help them get organised and linked up to markets. An example are the farmers’ field schools, or FFS, that FAO helped launch together with integrated pest management in rice-producing areas of Indonesia. That was then brought to Kenya, where it’s also worked well, though under different conditions. You’re empowering farmers to take their own decisions, not telling them to do one thing.
So extension, too, is about shifting the burden of responsibility?
Everything about the new aid modalities in rural development is aimed at national ownership, responsibility and accountability to the ultimate client, the farmer. It’s not about relying on what some foreign expert decided 15 years ago was the best way of delivering knowledge to farmers, but about adapting to each circumstance. Direct budget support — giving money rather than imposing a project and a blueprint, which are almost impossible to change or adapt in mid-stream — allows a much more flexible approach.
|
