Lessons in scaling up
How do the benefits of innovation in agriculture and natural resource management spread to more people? What type of innovations do people prefer – when, where and why? How and when does spontaneous diffusion take place? What conditions can be created and what methodologies can be used to enhanced or plan going to scale? What are the obstacles of going to scale? Can they be overcome and how?
Going to scale has multiple dimension, methodologies, players and context – e.g. spatial, temporal, technological, economic, gender, ecological. What role these dimensions play in going to scale?
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4 - 5written by ILEIA editorial teamMany research and development programmes try to address objectives such as doubling food production, or erradicating poverty. Although there are many successful cases around the globe, only a few of them are spreading fast. To optimise returns to efforts and spread impact to as many farmers as possible, it is important to analyse which approaches are successful and why. It is increasingly understood that conventional Green Revolution agriculture and top-down research and development approaches have strong limitations. This explains the growing interest to learn lessons from alternative approaches and have them spread to many farmers.
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6 - 10written by Julian F GonsalvesEvaluations of programmes are necesasry to understand which approaches to scaling up are most effective or to show the effectiveness of new approaches, for example in participatory development. The goal of this article is to discuss the basic principles behind scaling up and the lessons gained from worldwide experiences in order to improve our general understanding of the process. Includes a description of the different types of scaling up, and the necessary \"driving forces\" behind it.
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11 - 12This article presents seven strategic elements for successful upscaling, resulting from a workshop held in Whitstable, U.K. These include, for example, engaging in policy dialogue on pro-poor development, or building capacity and institutional systems to sustain and replicate. But these strategies and the framework proposed are not prescriptive, and thus have to be understood only as a guide. The limited number of successful cases in scaling-up research shows no absolute strategies or priositation of elements.
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13 - 13Many research and development organisations accept that the priorities and foci of research must be for development. In this light, the ten fundamentals described here provide the logical common ground on which research and development partnerships should be built. Drawn from \"Scaling up the impact of agroforestry research\", By P.J.M. Cooper and G. Denning, 2000.
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14 - 17written by Carl E TaylorIt is apparent that our current models of development are not working, especially when judged by the fundamental criteria of sustainability and equity. Scaling up of social development is our most urgent problem. This article shares experiences from the health sector and its possible relevance to agriculture. Presents some basic principles, three domensions of going to scale, and six criteria which are needed to measure the progress in social development.
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18 - 21written by Russ DiltsFrom the first Farmer Field Schools consisting of 25 farmers each to a peoplecentred IPM movement counting several millions of farmers in many countries, the IPM programme has indeed brought benefits to many. The example of Indonesia is evidence to the process of farmer empowerment that has been initiated through the IPM programme. Farmers have taken on the roles of experts, trainers, researchers, strategic planners, organisers and policy makers, which has made way for IPM to become a successful, farmer-driven movement.
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22 - 22written by Jose Benites , Sandrine VanephIn the early 1970s, farmers in Santa Catarina, Brazil, tried conventional terracing as a solution to the problems of continuous erosion and declining yields. The inconsistent results led farmers and researchers to tackle the problems at their source, trying to find solutions to avoid the direct impact of rainfall on the bare soil and improve water infiltration. What began as green manuring has now evolved to residue-based zero tillage for maintaining a permanent soil cover.
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23 - 26written by Jean Marc von der WeidSince 1995, AS-PTA has facilitated a successful family-farmer programme in the central-southern part of Parana, Brazil. Thousands of farmers have gone through a process of discovering solutions to their farming problems and thereby improved their understanding of the principles of ecology and agroecology. This article presents some of the conditions for the successful results so far, such as having well established community structures in combination with the recent dynamics in social and political life. Their proposals to scale up the programme includes considering credit as a key for accelerating the process of adoption.
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27 - 29written by Eric Holt-GiménezOver ten thousand farmers in Central America belong to the Campesino a Campesino movement and use the agroecological practices it has developed. The effectiveness of these practices was clearly seen in the resistance that these agroecological farms had to the Hurricane Mitch. Yet, the question, “If it works so well, why hasn’t it spread more?” remains. And it is in reply to this question that the author lists out a number of key impediments, which need to be addressed if more farmers are to be reached with these practices.
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30 - 30written by Stephen Sherwood , Sergio LarreaGuinope, in Honduras, was the site of a highly accalimed people-centred development project in the 1980s. This brief article shows some of the results of interviews carried out fifteen years after the inception of the Integrated Development Programme, including a list of essential project attributes and strategies for more effective rural development. (Summarised from the article by the authors in Agriculture and Human Values (18:195-208), \"Looking back to see ahead: farmer lessons and recomendations after 15 years of innovation and leadership in Guinope, Honduras\").
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31 - 34The International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) has been conducting research on contour hedgerow technologies for the past decade in Claveria, Misamis oriental, the Philippines, assessing the management strategies that address key technical constraints of the system. Since adoption of the technology by farmers was low, ICRAF refocused its efforts in finding alternative systems that address the technical and institutional issues of conservation farming. The system promoted is being widely adopted, enhanced by a dissemination approach called \"Landcare\".
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35 - 38Improved fallows with Sesbania and other species have been the focus of ICRAF’s research since 1985. These improved fallow systems have a great potential to increase maize yields with or without application of inorganic fertilisers. This fact alone has increased the number of farmers testing and using improved fallow practices in Eastern Zambia from 200 to 10,000 in just 5 years. ICRAF’s is now developing ways of scaling up the adoption of this innovation to benefit the many thousands of farmers in Eastern Zambia, and in the South African region. ICRAF is, however, not unaware of the constraints that have to be overcome in order to achieve success.
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39 - 42written by Chesha Wettasinha , MASL StaffThe Mahaweli Development Programme is considered the most ambituous development initiative undertaken in Sri Lanka in the recent past. Five major dams constructed on the largest river supplied irrigation water to an area of 144 000 hectares. The Promoting Multifunctional Household Environments (PMHE) project ran from 1001 to 2000, when the "Mahaweli dream" han begun to blur. Success came from the training of staff, documentation and capacity building, but also from other aspects which deserve mention: flexibility, perseverance and a shared ownership.
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43 - 45written by Michiel VerweijThe April 1996 LEISA issue described an unique system of interconnected ponds in the Oloy community near Cochabamba, Bolivia. Now, pond farming is spreading fast and integrated agricultire is promising to become a sustainable prodcution system suitable for small farmers on Andean slopes. This article analyses the development and spread of the system, based on the experiences of CORACA, a peasant organisation that has contributed significantly to the promotion of family pond farming.
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46 - 46For the first time in 50 years, several state governments in India are dealing wwith drought in a different way - moving away from drought relief to drough mitigation. Summary of the cover story in Down To Earth (August 15, 2001), titled \"A water journey\" and written by Richard Mahapatra, Kazimuddin Ahmed and Binayak Das.
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48 - 51In 1982, the Baif development Research Foundation initiated a programme to improve the living situation of tribal communities in South Gujarat afected by environmental degradation and labour migration. In direct interaction with the tribal communities, the Wadi (orchard) model gradually developed. This combines the improvement of human and ecosystem wellbeing, and has been adapted by over 25 000 families from 300 villages. This article discusses the impact of this model.
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52 - 53written by Ruerd RubenThis article discusses the findings and recommendation for policy reform resulting from field research carried out by the Development Economics Group of the Wageningen University. The analysis of various agro-ecological practices used by farmers in Central America , East Africa and West Africa provided interesting comparative results regarding the economic effects in different settings. Four criteria were used to assess the economic attractiveness: profitability, effect on input efficiency, consequences for labour use, and impact for risk management.
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60 - 60During the first half of September, Anita Ingevall and Fleming Nielsen of the ILEIA team spent two weeks meeting several readers of the LEISA Magazine in Ethiopia.
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