Farmers and scientists working together to achieve more sustainable land management
Allen, W.J., Bosch, O.J.H., and Gibson, R.G.
[Conference paper presented at the 1995 North American Farming Systems Research-Extension Symposium: Linkages among Farming Systems and Communities. Ames, Iowa, 5-8 November http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/research/social/afres.asp]
Over the past decade, the role of agricultural research and development (R&D) has moved beyond offering definitive, generally applicable packages of advice and recommendations on a 'take it' or 'leave it' basis. The needs facing rural families and communities vary widely. In many cases we simply do not have definitive answers for the problems facing those who have the responsibility for making sound agricultural decisions in an uncertain and ever-changing environment. These challenges, in turn, provide the basis for a new era in agricultural R&D, whereby researchers, farmers and policy makers can learn together how to best manage the world's agricultural lands in a sustainable manner.
From this perspective, successful R&D efforts will be participatory in nature, and involve the community in all aspects of the research process. This will ensure research efforts are more closely linked with the needs of management and policy. They will be based on concepts of open and evolving ecosystems, and build on principles of experiential learning and systems thinking. And they will recognise and address the multiple social perspectives that characterise today's agricultural lands. Within this setting, successful resource management will be based on a process of active adaptive management, or "learning by doing" (Walters & Hilborn, 1978). The approach outlined here builds on the principles of Farming Systems Research and Extension (FSRE), emphasising the importance of local knowledge. Farmers are regarded as "experimental researchers" in the widest sense; as they manage their land on a day-to-day basis they observe the effects of what they do and adjust their management practices accordingly.
In the agricultural lands of New Zealand's South Island high country these principles have formed the basis for the development of a robust framework (Figure 1) which is bringing scientific and local knowledge systems together into a single, accessible and structured focal point, to support the identification and adoption of more sustainable land management practices (Allen et al, 1995; Bosch et al, 1995; Gibson et al, 1995). Researchers, extension personnel and users (farmers, policy makers, etc.) are recognised as forming elements of one agricultural information system (Roling, 1988). This provides a richer role for extension activities to support the development of community dialogue processes, within which people interact to create new knowledge and broaden their perspective of the world.
Figure 1: A participatory research framework to facilitate the identification and introduction of more sustainable land management practices
Sharing existing knowledge
The first phase of the approach (figure 1) involves the sharing of existing science and local knowledge relating to the understanding of any given system. This requires an initial scoping process to clearly define the nature of the system under consideration, and the needs and opportunities facing the different interest groups that may be involved. Because this involves users in the research process from the outset, it is more likely to lead to the development of outcomes relevant to community needs. It provides a basis for the design of appropriate processes (interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, etc.) to unlock and access the relevant existing data and information from both local and research communities. This information is then amalgamated in a central data and information pool and structured so as to allow for its sharing and evaluation by all those concerned.
Given the complexity and different social perceptions of many agricultural and environmental situations, the process actively supports improved communication flows among all those involved. Facilitated workshop formats provide a learning environment, within which participants develop a shared understanding of how others see the world and how that shapes the way they act in it (e.g. manage their land, carry out their research, develop policy). This process of ongoing community dialogue should be viewed as a mosaic of social interactions, operating at different points within a hierarchy of decision-making levels. Discussions of how best to achieve pastoral production goals primarily involve farmers and scientists. Issues such as the management of particular landscapes will involve a wider range of interest groups.
Importantly, the process recognises the contextual nature of information. A supplied farm strategy that pertains to describe the optimal grazing regime for maximising stock weight-gain, for example, will always have been derived within a particular social, economic and ecological setting. A regime supplied from a full-time farmer is likely to be different from that supplied by a farmer who undertakes a significant amount of off-farm work, and consequently has less time available for moving stock. Scientific results are similarly derived within a particular context, which will include factors such as scale, site and the researcher's personal worldview. Accordingly, the community dialogue process is designed to seek the active cooperation of participants in developing a common understanding of the context in which any individual piece of information becomes relevant. Diversity is encouraged, rather than undervalued. This makes it less likely that useful information will be dismissed out of hand, and acts to minimise unnecessary conflict over the value and relevance of information supplied by different sources.
The outcome of these workshops is twofold. It provides those farmers who participated in the process with immediate access to new ideas and perspectives which may help them re-evaluate their current management practices. It also provides researchers with the resources necessary to develop a structured library of knowledge-based tools that is relevant to community needs, and is more likely to gain the acceptance of users. Not only is there likely to be greater commitment on the part of users to a system they have co-developed, but also a greater understanding of any changes needed to make it work (Brittan, 1980).
This comprehensive knowledge-base is designed to incorporate a wide range of experiential knowledge, expert systems, DSSs, software packages and databases, bringing together local and scientific knowledge systems characterised by their fragmentation. Because many objectives (such as those related to sustainability) are influenced by choices taken at a number of levels of decision-making, decision support must be provided as it relates to specific system goals at different hierarchies (e.g. block/site, individual enterprise, catchment, region). The centralised nature of the knowledge-base provides the possibility of highlighting many of the links between different decision-making levels and different systems, thereby enabling users to gain a more holistic appreciation of a complex situation. Because it is goal-oriented, such a knowledge-base can also be constructed in a modular fashion. Individual modules, in turn, provide the basis for individual users with specific information needs to be supported through traditional dissemination mediums such as the production of brochures and leaflets.
A continual process
However, for such a knowledge-based system to advance sustainable land management successfully in the long term it needs to evolve as society and the environment change. The strength of this participatory research framework is that it allows for the substance and context of the required information flows to be updated as more knowledge becomes available, and different goals are set.
As farmers adopt new strategies and measure the results of their actions (formally adopting the linked concepts of monitoring and adaptive management), they will continually gain new information which can be used to add to the data and information pool (Bosch et al, 1995). In a similar way the pool will receive an ongoing flow of new data and information from science activities. Accordingly, the nature of work undertaken by individual scientists will not change, the only difference being that the starting point for scientific experimentation is firmly embedded in the community. The earlier processes of ongoing community dialogue will automatically aid the identification of new and relevant research initiatives as knowledge gaps are identified. Importantly, these activities also provide the community with the opportunity to prioritise their information and technical needs as they work more closely with researchers. The comprehensive and structured nature of the knowledge pool also serves as a framework to aid science planners in integrating the nature and outcomes of different research programmes. And because the knowledge pool is designed to provide decision support, it also automatically acts to disseminate research results to the end-user.
The process is thus iterative, with each iteration serving to maximise the knowledge available to support decision-making by those in the community at any point in time. The addition of different modules and issues will arise from the need to meet a community objective, which may be financial, ecological or social, or some combination of these. As those involved cooperate to develop the necessary knowledge and knowledge-based tools, new issues will be raised and the process expanded to include other issues and interest groups. From an ecological perspective, we live in an inter-connected and finite world. The achievement of an ethical or sustainable agriculture is dependent on the acceptance of the critical importance of the whole system. In the South Island high country, for example, agricultural activities cannot be viewed in isolation from other land use options (e.g. conservation, tourism, forestry), which in turn impact on wider social services and issues relating to such things as employment and education.
Concluding comments
Involving the community in participatory research is essential if sustainable land management issues are to be resolved in a constantly changing environment. The way we "see" the world, determines what we "do" to it (Maturana & Varela, 1972). The challenge is to provide the learning environments which enable all those involved to develop a more holistic perspective, within which they can make their particular contribution (Bawden et al, 1985).
Adaptive management approaches, such as those described here, provide science with the opportunity to learn from the experiences gained within enterprise and catchment-level systems. Participatory research allows scientists a better feeling for how their research field fits into the total system, and provides an appreciation of management concerns and issues. At the same time, formal involvement in the linked processes of monitoring and adaptive management mean that land-managers acquire greater technical expertise - building on both collective local knowledge and an associated scientific awareness of their particular environment. Although such a co-operative venture may not be able to offer definitive solutions to such elusive issues as sustainability, it can begin to offer a variety of knowledge-based tools and possible courses of action to enable the community to make better informed decisions. In turn, as communication flows between different sectors of the community are expanded and improved, the level of conflict surrounding a number of land management issues should be minimised. In this way, the process also provides a mechanism to deal with resource-related conflicts that are focussed more on values than facts. Accordingly, this participatory approach represents a framework through which different segments of society can cooperate to develop and work towards a more coordinated set of environmental goals.
References
Allen, W.J., Bosch, O.J.H., Gibson, R.G. & Jopp, A.J. (1995) Co-learning our way to sustainability: Integrating local and scientific knowledge through an evolutionary research approach to support land management decision-making (in press) Proceedings 1st International Conference of MODSS for Agriculture and Environment, Honolulu, July 23-29
Bawden, R.J., Ison, R.J., Macadam, R.D., Packham, R.J. and Valentine, I. (1985) A research paradigm for systems agriculture. Agricultural Systems Research for Developing Countries, Proceedings of an International Workshop (ed. J.V. Remenyi) ACIAR
Bosch, O.J.H., Williams, J.M., Allen, W.J. and Ensor, A. (1995) Integrating community-based monitoring into the adaptive management process - the New Zealand experience (in press) Proceedings of the Fifth International Rangelands Congress, Salt Lake City, July 23-28
Brittan, J.N.G. (1980) Design for a changing environment The Computer Journal 23(1): 36-42
Gibson, R.S., Allen, W.J. and Bosch, O.J.H. (1995) Condition assessment concepts and their role in facilitating range management (in press) Annals of the Arid Zone
Maturana, H.R. & Varela, F.J. (1972) Autopoeisis and Cognition - the Realisation of the Living, Reidel Publishing, Boston.
Roling, N. (1988) Extension science: Information systems in agricultural development University Press, Cambridge
Walters, C.J. and Hilborn, R. (1978) Ecological optimization and adaptive management Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 9:157-188
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