Future Directions of ADB Involvement in Agriculture and Natural Resources Research

Future Directions of Asian Development Bank Involvement in Agriculture and Natural Resources Research This unpublished précis excerpts selected arguments put forward toward the definition of the Asian Development Bank's policy on agriculture and natural resources research, dated 1995.

Olivier Serrat 06/03/1995

1 Introduction Traditionally, the general goals of agriculture and natural resources research policy have been growth, equity and food security. Agriculture and natural resources research contributes to growth by increasing the productivity of farm resources. In the context of the Asia and Pacific region, the benefits of such research have come through the spread of modern rice and wheat varieties accompanied by increased use of fertilizer and irrigation. These innovations contributed to equity by, for example, lowering the real cost of foods consumed by the rural and urban poor. They correspondingly contributed to food security by enabling self-sufficiency for the countries in the region.

Currently, the food production versus population growth issue is the subject of some debate but the issue is not viewed as critical, even though there are widely divergent views on what the next 20–30 years will hold regarding the world's capacity to feed more than 8 billion people.

Research initiatives are defined by the problems they seek to solve, not the product they hope to identify. The Asian Development Bank's Medium-Term Strategic Framework for the period 1995–1998 defines the Bank's strategic development objectives and, accordingly, the future directions of the Bank's involvement in agriculture and natural resources research are determined by their potential contribution to the achievement of these objectives. The primary areas concerned are rural development, including women in development, and natural resource management and the environment.

Economic growth is necessary to reduce poverty but, because many segments of society can be bypassed in the growth process, it is often not enough to ensure that the deprivations suffered by the poor are overcome. Although traditional growth-oriented agriculture and natural resources research similarly offers a good chance that the poor will gain, past efforts have largely benefited urban consumers and the better-off farmers. Because more than half of the Asia and Pacific region's poor population resides in the rural areas, the Bank's strategic objective of poverty reduction can only be met by explicitly targeting the rural poor and the complex interactions between poverty, environment, and development.

Key Operating Principles While there have been reservations concerning the effectiveness of targeting agriculture and natural resources research to contribute to rural development, such targeting can be effective within a relatively new framework of conceptual approaches that has been working in recent years. Some of the more important principles are: (i)

Local Communities. Competing demands for the dwindling stock of natural resources call for a careful consideration of alternative uses and appropriate economic pricing of resources. The clarification of ownership rights is often a key prerequisite for effective resource management. In the overall context of Bank involvement in agriculture and natural resources research, efforts will be made to use designs and technologies that acknowledge the role of local communities as the de facto owners and the only potentially effective managers of the scarce resources.

2 (ii)

Indigenous Technical Knowledge. Farmers possess an accumulated and mostly unwritten fund of knowledge concerning, for example, plants, soils, climate, seasons, and pests. This knowledge remains largely untapped and is largely ignored by formal research systems and conventional approaches to research. It has been ignored to the detriment of more rapid progress in solving the problems of resource-poor farmers in difficult environments. The Bank will encourage greater recognition of indigenous technical knowledge in adaptive, farmer-first, and farming systems approaches to agriculture and natural resources research.

(iii)

Women in Development. Agriculture and natural resources research to develop more effective farming systems in difficult resource environments will not be undertaken without the full involvement of the farmer who is key to the adoption of new approaches. Within this context, the interaction with farmers involving steps such as on-farm trials and feedback between farmers and research stations will incorporate the role, needs, and objectives of women as full partners in finding solutions for farming systems. The Bank recognizes the need to take gender into account in research policy and will only encourage research initiatives by international and national research institutes to improve farming systems that fully incorporate the role of women.

(iv)

Market Information. The Bank will, to the extent possible, promote agriculture and natural resources research that has a sound basis relative to market needs.

Incorporation of up-to-date market information can reduce the failure rate of new technologies and enhance the efficiency of the research process.

Research Approaches In the development of approaches to promote rural development and protection of the environment, the Bank will need to focus on adaptive research, while not ignoring original research. Adaptive research is more suited to promoting rural development over a range of socioecological conditions as it undertakes to find the needed adjustments of technology to a particular set of farming conditions. This may take the form of further selection of variety attributes of a different kind than those emphasized in the original applied research. National adaptations of crop varieties released by international research institutes are of this form.

Adaptive research also includes the interactive process of on-farm trials and feedback to research stations that is a feature of farming systems research.

Farming systems research complements adaptive research and recognizes that technology generation requires knowledge of on-farm constraints and priorities. Farming systems research views small farmers as the clients of agricultural and natural resources research and views the farm in a holistic manner. It first identifies technical and socioeconomic constraints to improved production and then endeavors to develop solutions. It also involves multidisciplinary on-farm research and steady feedback to research stations to allow for adjustments to be made in technology design.

To increase the probability of success in improving farming systems, it is necessary to see the farmer as the key to adopting new approaches. Farmer-first research is particularly useful when oriented toward resource-poor farmers characterized by complex, diverse and risky farming systems and livelihoods. In particular, farmer-first research distinguishes between the farm systems for which green revolution technology represented a major transformation and those of resource-poor farmers that have seen little change. It emphasizes the indigenous technical

3 knowledge of resource-poor farmers and their experimental and innovative capability. It has multiple points of entry and exit, puts farmers in control, and involves role reversals since it requires scientists to learn from, consult, supply ideas to, support and collaborate with farmers.

Farmers, on the other hand, analyze problems, decide priorities, make choices, and undertake experiments. Although farmer-first research is difficult because of the absence of formalized structure in its method and because it relies heavily on individual initiative by scientists and researchers, the Bank will encourage this approach to enhancing the farming systems of resource-poor farmers.

Diffusion of Agricultural Technology Research policy is about both generation and diffusion of new agricultural technology to farm households. Generation of new agricultural technology refers to the factors that underlie the supply of innovations. These include, among others, the forces determining the topics selected for research, the institutional organizations of research, the resources allocated to research, the management of research and the outcomes of research. Diffusion of new agricultural technology, on the other hand, relates to the factors that influence the adoption of innovations by farmers. These involve, for instance, farm-level and economy-wide constraints affecting technology adoption, the adaptation of research findings to local conditions, off-farm and onfarm trials of new crop varieties, interactive adaptive research involving farmers in the research process, as well as the provision of extension services or other dissemination methods for diffusing information between farmers. Thus, to be effectual, agriculture and natural resource research must be complemented with an effective agricultural extension system and with efficient marketing and input supply services. The Bank recognizes that these factors condition the effectiveness of agriculture and natural resources research and will ascertain that the necessary conduits exist for diffusion of new agricultural technology to farm households.

National Research Institutes While some of the products of agriculture and natural resources research can readily be transferred across countries, many are site-specific and need to be developed or adapted within the countries that will use them. This implies that only part of the required knowledge and technology can be developed in international research institutes. At the same time, the Bank will promote strengthened linkages between international and national research institutes. The Bank will give greater recognition to national research systems and endeavor to advance further the development of national research capacity, especially that of the universities and the private sector.

The views expressed in this précis are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Asian Development Bank, or its Board of Governors or the governments they represent.