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Editor's introduction volume 11, number 4
It is an unusual step for Development in Practice to dedicate a whole number to what might at first sight seem like a rather narrow or technical theme, especially if the topic in question - agroforestry - is not ones own area of expertise. But readers from all backgrounds and disciplines will find in this guest-edited issue a highly accessible collection of articles, all of them informed by extensive experience, and all of them relevant to development policy and practice in the broadest sense. Guest editors Peter Cooper, Glenn Denning, and Steven Franzel, all from the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (part of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, or CGIAR) (1) have commissioned a wealth of stimulating papers from their colleagues around the globe, from the remote north-western region of India, to the Yucatán Peninsula on Mexicos Caribbean coast, and from the hillsides of Uganda to the Peruvian Amazon.
What perhaps most impressed me is the way in which the authors not only convey their own passionate commitment to the small and often marginal farmers with whom they work, but also the depth and quality of insights they bring to wider debates: issues such as the relationship between theory and practice, the proper role of research in development, constraints on scaling up (or, scaling out) local successes, the nature of human motivation for risk-taking and learning, and how individuals and communities respond to technical innovation, are all critically explored here. The value of learner-centred approaches is shown to be far greater than can be measured through the transfer of formal knowledge, and has as much to do with what works as it does with any ideological principle. Participation and collaboration, for instance, may be good things in themselves or as a means to various ends, but the transaction costs of such approaches make it necessary not merely to invoke or romanticise such ideals, but also to demonstrate the tangible value-added they bring to improving the situation of people living on the margins of the global economy. The conventional information- or technology-transfer model, based on simplifying the complex, separating the connected, and standardising the diverse, is shown to be misguided and wasteful. Contributors constantly stress the importance of exploring and experimenting with a range of possible agroforestry techniques and approaches to monitoring and evaluation, in conjunction with the farming communities who will adopt or reject these methods over time: however precarious their livelihoods, small and subsistence farmers are not interested in quick, but short-lived, fixes and indeed may well have a longer-term perspective than do people who can afford to mortgage their futures. Again and again, the emphasis is on importance of patience, and of tempering a commitment to social change with a willingness to be in it for the long haul. Development agencies, which are accustomed to setting their own agendas and to re-fashioning them at will, would do well to hear what these highly experienced practitioners have to say.
This issue will shortly be published in the Development in Practice Readers series, full details of which will be available on the website.
1 ICRAF is based in Kenya. Other members of the CGIAR include CIAT (Colombia), CIMMYT (Mexico), CIP (Peru), ICARDA (Syria), ICRISAT (India), IFPRI (USA), IITA (Nigeria), ILCA (Ethiopia), and IRRI (Philippines). Peter Cooper has recently left ICRAF and joined the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), which is headquartered in Ottawa.
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