Resources

This is a compendium of papers presented at IDS/IIED seminar on 'Wealth and Well-Being Ranking'. It draws on various attempts to implement a wealth ranking exercise, given in the form of presentations, which include: B. Grandin, and the 'Background to wealth ranking'; Marie-Therese Sarch, 'The Adoption of New Agricultural Technology in The Gambia'; Verona Groverman, and the ' People's Participation Programme', Swaziland; Ian Scoones, looking at 'Wealth Ranking in Zimbabwe'; and Pramesh Shah's report on 'AKRSP (India), Gujarat, among others. Most comments and questions focused on definitions, applicability and sensitivity. The last section looks at the questions left unanswered, and is concerned with what happens over a longer time period, whether wealth ranking can be implemented over a wider area, and notes the difficulty experienced with regard to passing wealth ranking ideas on to community facilitators.

This paper may be of interest to government policy makers and planners, NGO rural fieldworkers, agriculturalists and economists. The paper describes the application of Farmer Participatory Research (FPR) in Botswana. FPR is viewed as being most useful as a complement to more traditional on-station and on-farm farming systems research approaches. Its goal is to incorporate farmers more directly into the process of technology development and application. The paper describes the success of the incorporation of FPR into the research programme at Francistown, Botswana. The success of this synthesis is seen to lie in the final structure being shaped by local cultural norms.

This is a study of PRA methods of mapping and ranking that have been used in two Indian villages to study the villagers' perception of rural poverty. The maps were used to help the villagers identify the poor households in the village, rank them, and understand the basis of the ranking process. The ranking procedure takes into account not only living conditions and assets of the household but also their accessibility to food, employment, public services and common property resources. This makes for variations in ranking of poor households which the villagers perceived easily and clearly.

This article reports on Tamil Nadu Agricultural University collaboration with the Ford Foundation in exploring the applicability of recent advances in farmer participatory research and extension methods to rainfed conditions in Tamil Nadu. It reports on exercises conducted over two days in Kalkaruchi village near Aruppukottai. It describes a sequence of participatory social and resource mapping exercises combined with wealth ranking that attempted to discover the poorest people in the village. The main lesson yielded from the study was that PRA methods revealed hidden complexity and can bring the poorest to the attention of investigators.

Considers the changes that are afoot with regard to learning, research and extension within agriculture in developing countries. Decentralization, participatory approaches and such methods are gradually becoming less marginalized, with the professional rewards of their adoption rising compared with the risks. For change to be rapid and sustainable requires the mutual reinforcement of participatory methods, new learning environments, and institutional support. The paper contains sections on the following: changing phases in agricultural research, extension and development; a vision for the future; the role of governments and state institutions; non governmental organizations; international agricultural research and the CGIAR; local institutions; education and learning organizations; and institutional and policy implications for the new professionalism. It is concluded that a sound strategy is steady lateral spread through alliances, mutual support, networking, training and sharing, stressing not only methods and learning environments, but also personal behaviour and attitudes. This paper begins with the perspective that "the dominant positivist and modernist frameworks have singularly failed to help poor people and reduce inequity." It proceeds to consider the options and alternatives to the dominant paradigm considering common uniting themes. Some of these themes are: the affirmation of individuals and their perspectives, the importance of context and therefore limitations on the whole notion of transferability and replicability and the importance of participation.

This paper reports on the experiences gained through the application of wealth ranking techniques in Zimbabwe. It is a study of household economics and livestock production. It considers the tools used; the results, historical, ecological and gender contrasts; the process of wealth ranking; and its usefulness as a RRA tool.