Kumar, A.

A short paper detailing how clashes of interest arise when community plans have to fit in with donor policies. In the proposed alternative approach, people plan for feasible activities first before fixing their mind on donor driven targeted aims. The authors give two brief examples from India of use of the basic method, which includes PLA for situation analysis and action planning.

This note is based on the adaptation of matrix scoring in order to investigate local perceptions of agroecosystem properties, namely: productivity, stability, sustainability and equity. It concerns a recently concluded PRA workshop in Paiyur for scientists from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. The paper concludes that sequencing of activities and a relaxed approach to collaborative exploration is a prerequisite for understanding the behaviour of the farm family. Scoring of any kind involves implicit weighting, and inter-year, inter-plot and enterprise combinations confound the issues.