Resources

This paper presents examples of how farmers' diagrams put farmers' ideas and knowledge first in on-farm research priority setting, experimental layouts, and integrated farming-system design. Although they concern the integration of aquaculture and agriculture, these procedures are just as useful for those wanting to integrate agroforestry, livestock, or any new enterprise into the farming system. It advances the idea that farmers' diagrams can improve field methods in on-farm research. Qualitative methods are directed at putting farmers' ideas first, increasing the number of farmers able to participate, and orienting technology testing to farm-system levels. The paper illustrates how farmers' diagrams can help put farmers' ideas about on-farm research priorities, experimental layouts, and integrated-farming-system designs first.

The paper reports the results of a survey of 41 practitioners who where asked to report on the methods they were using on their projects, and the reasons for their success or failure. Most importantly this conventional approach to farming systems research failed to incorporate the experience and knowledge of farmers into its survey design. It is concluded that simple research questions can often provide the needed information in order that technologies useful to resource poor farmers are developed. [Abstract based on mimeo version]

This paper attempts to rethink on-farm experimentation (OFE) in the light of farmer participatory approaches. It claims that a new protocol for OFE must involve a resource systems approach with the aim of improving the sustainability of the whole farming system through the increased integration and recycling of on-farm resources. This protocol will have three major elements: resource inventory and analysis; exposure to alternative resource use techniques; and, monitoring and evaluation of farming system transformation. Evidence in the paper suggests that for integrated aquaculture-agriculture systems, farmer participatory mapping and modelling do enable farmers to develop a more holistic approach to management of their farm's resources.

In order to obtain detailed information about project participants's daily tasks, particularly in a gender context, 139 calenders were constructed for one specific day. The timeline focused on all the activities undertaken during that day, including agricultural work. Men did more agricultural work than women, although women worked harder overall. Of the 103 agricultural workers surveyed, the men spent more time with livestock, both were involved in nursery work, and men carried out slightly more work in the fields. The other projects studied were water and santitation, women's income generating projects and education. The gender difference in perception of agricultural tasks is noted, which relates closely to time spent talking, resting and in 'reproductive' chores.

It describes why and how wealth ranking was used in the early stages of a collaborative policy research and training project in Mongolia. The Policy Alternatives for Livestock Development project aims to facilitate the transition from a command to a market economy in the extensive livestock sector which dominates the Mongolian rural economy. The paper addresses the role and value of wealth ranking by card sorting in the research and training process, and its sequencing with other activities, rather than the technical details of the method itself. Wealth ranking served two principle purposes, one direct and one indirect. It enabled the team parsimoniously to target the use of other research methods in subsequent rounds of fieldwork by means of positive sampling. This paper contains sections on the following: the research context, the direct use of wealth ranking, indebtedness, availability of labour, and the indirect uses of wealth ranking.

In conferences on RRA the 'tarmac' or 'main road bias' has been frequently listed among the biases affecting outsiders' observations and perceptions of rural poverty. Referring to fieldwork carried out in the southwestern costal zone of Sri Lanka, the paper illustrates some of the misconceptions that can result from 'tarmac' bias. Using the core-periphery approach, the paper concludes that the poor may not even be found just by taking a path off the main road. Also noted is the use of housing standard as a good approximation against which to measure success in the war against roadside and other kinds of anti-poor observational bias.

From a position of disenchantment with traditional approaches to poverty measurement and alleviation, it presents an analysis of rural communities' perceptions of rural poverty as revealed through the use of PRA. The study covers three Indian villages where PRA techniques of mapping village households and land use, were used to arrive at a wealth ranking. The paper also suggests policy measures based on the rural community's perceptions. In this paper, it is observed that the villages' criteria of well-being is a much broader concept encompassing a wide range of socioeconomic and environmental aspects of living, as well as access to public services.