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| Date: | Thu, 8 May 2014 10:03:04 +0200 |
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Initial introduction: Dick Tinsley, Professor Emeritus, Soils & Crop Sciences, Colorado State University, approaching 40 years working with smallholder farmers and their communities. Author book: Developing Smallholder Agriculture: A Global Perspective and Manager of the website: www.smallholderagriculture.com
As I reviewed the material I think there is another dimension to evaluating the impact of agriculture research. That is the drag imposed on the results by the limited operational resources available to farmers, particularly smallholders. This is basically a decade long oversight resulting from the limitations of agronomy or other biological research. Agronomy does an excellent job of determining what is physically possible, but says nothing about what is needed to extend the replicated small plot results across a field, farm or smallholder community. It just assumes this is not a problem. The need is to relook at the basic premise that has guided agriculture development research, add the dimension of integrating the technology into the limited operational resources available to smallholder, promoting the supporting technologies, most of which are drudgery relief innovations, which will allow the smallholders to better adopt the research results. A part of this is the expectation that a smallholder with diet between 2000 kcal and 3000 kcal/day can work a full day requiring a diet exceeding 4000 kcal.
The underlying question is who in the research or development effort is responsible to determine the operational limits farmers face that often extends crop establishment more than 8 weeks. Or, given what is available, how will that impact on promoted innovations. Is this an administrative void in the agriculture research and development effort? Can we effectively evaluate the impact of agriculture research in reaching smallholder communities until this is addressed? What are the probabilities that what we see on the ground in need of technical innovation is in reality the optimization of the technology to the limited operational resources the farmer have available to manage their land?
I would now like to refer the group to some webpages for the www.smallholdeagriculture.com website. They are: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~rtinsley/BasicPremise.htm ; http://lamar.colostate.edu/~rtinsley/Adoptors.htm ; http://lamar.colostate.edu/~rtinsley/Integration.htm ; http://lamar.colostate.edu/~rtinsley/DietPoster.pdf . I think the last webpage which is a poster on dietary energy balance is particular good at highlighting this concern. Feel free to download and distribute it as you feel appropriate.
Dr. Dick Tinsley
Soil and Crop Science Department,
Colorado State University,
Fort Collins,
80523 USA
Richard.Tinsley (at) colostate.edu
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