The knowledge of the Soligas and their practices of conservation are linked to the clan (kula) system and their configuration of the landscape. Forest fires benefit and also harm the forest depending on where they occur and the intensity and timing of the fire. Soligas have used controlled ground fires for long, especially when they practised shifting cultivation, for NTFP harvesting and as a general forest management treatment. Forest fires benefit and also harm the forest depending on where they occur and the intensity and timing of the fire. Soligas have used controlled ground fires for long, especially when they practised shifting cultivation, for NTFP harvesting and as a general forest management treatment. Forest fires benefit and also harm the forest depending on where they occur and the intensity and timing of the fire. Soligas have used controlled ground fires for long, especially when they practised shifting cultivation, for NTFP harvesting and as ageneral forest management treatment.

Traditional Knowledge and Conservation, by Madegowda C, Economic & Political Weekly Magazine, 23 May 2009

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ATMA

the Agricultural and Technology Management Agency (ATMA) initiative could contribute positively to managing the current crisis and strengthen India's food security.

ATMA is a Government of India initiative designed to disseminate research and technological improvements in agriculture to farmers and stakeholders involved in agricultural activities at the district level. The coverage under ATMA has been progressively increasing. In some states, such as Gujarat and Maharashtra, by early 2009 all districts have been covered by this initiative.

Finances for this initiative, whose design requires relatively small outlays, are shared between the Centre (90%) and the states (10%). The implementation responsibility is, however, with the states.

The design of the ATMA initiative envisages public private partnerships (PPP) involving all relevant stakeholders. Thus, in Gujarat, ATMA initiatives involves partnership with state agricultural universities, seed and land development corporations, state fertiliser companies, flower grower associations, private sector agro businesses and even with agricultural media organisations. The capacity to undertake PPPs with multiple stakeholders on part of the ATMA Directorate at the state level is therefore crucial.

This is another area where there is need to build capacities of various states.

As there is provision for obtaining the services of persons with requisite skills for a specified period, this initiative enables broad-basing of skills available for improving agriculture, while minimising addition to the permanent staff of the government.

The ATMA initiative recognises one of the most important insights from the economic growth literature. It is that labour and capital as factors of production do not fully explain the resulting output. It is the application (and diffusion) of knowledge economy, usually referred to as technical progress which significantly contributes to generating output from given factors of production.

It also recognises that all aspects of agriculture from pre to post harvest must be infused with a knowledge economy perspective to improve Indian agriculture.

The ATMA initiative is particularly relevant for India as its share in arable land in the world at 11.5% is second only to the United States. India has the largest share of irrigated area in the world. It however lags considerably behind other countries in yield per hectare of different crops. Thus, in 2004, India's yield per hectare for paddy was only 75% of the world average. The corresponding figures for wheat were 93%, maize 38%, cereals 73%, pulses 79% and soya bean 48%.

India also lags behind in processing agricultural produce; and in developing robust databases and information systems relevant for developing sound agricultural policies and practices.

In Maharashtra, the ATMA initiative has led to encouraging results in horticulture; and in introducing the cashew crop and related processing activities. This is bringing new dynamism to parts of Maharashtra which have traditionally been laggards.

It is imperative to monitor the progress of each State in implementing the ATMA initiative; and to ensure that capacities of laggard states are strengthened. Energising the ATMA initiative should be a high priority for the new government to be formed after the elections.

Mukul G Asher is a professor of public policy and Azad Bali an instructor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. –DNA 18th Feb-http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1231816
The Indo-US agreement on agriculture will cast a demonising spell over the country and is bound to cause large-scale plunder of the agro-society and definitely tend to capitalize on our living, life pattern, culture and social norms. Already much maligned, misconceived and utterly irrelevant second green revolution is a clever ploy to promote the interest of America and its major Multinational Corporation\'s (MNCs). American MNCs like Wall-Mart and Mansanto have attended the first meeting of the Board of the Indo-US Agriculture Initiative to monitor agriculture research, education and dissemination and exchange of knowledge between India and America. The agreement amounts to an open invitation to the MNCs for the take over and control of our inputs and all other resources.
B. Serious Threat to Indian Agriculture
by Krishan Bir Chaudhary, The Movement of India, 01 March, 2006
WHEN THE INDIAN Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Washington in July 2005, a new US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agricultural Education, Teaching, Research, Service and Commercial Linkages was launched. It would be more accurate to call it the Ignorance Initiative. It is based on ignorance of Indian agriculture, it treats the Indian farmer as backward, and it aims at promoting the hazards of genetic engineering. It is ignorant of the ecological and indigenous alternatives that are producing more food while conserving resources.
The US-India Knowledge Initiative in agriculture is promoting ignorance in the name of knowledge.
by Vandana Shiva, Resurgence Website, 08 July, 2006
Capacity.org, 01 Apr 2008

Learning alliances for poverty reduction

C. Shambu Prasad

Agriculture is back on the international agenda. The most recent World Development Report looks at learning for farmers but largely ignores the need for learning in institutions, including agricultural research centres.


Most agricultural research and development (R&D) institutions have been shaped by traditional approaches to technology transfer, in which farmers, extension agencies and civil society organisations passively accept the technologies delivered by researchers. These linear approaches of the ‘Green Revolution’ were based on the objective of increasing food supplies in resource-rich regions, using improved crop varieties that require increased external inputs.


This high-input model is now facing serious challenges due to its unsustainable use of resources, the pressure on the environment, and its inability to address the needs of small farmers. The rising costs of farm inputs and the falling prices of some agricultural produce have increased income inequalities, and have added to the burden of impacts on rural communities.


Coping with these changes will require much more than increased investment in agricultural R&D. The large research institutions need to realise that they are just one part of an interconnected system. Unlike in the past, they are neither the sole sources of knowledge, nor can they claim to have all the answers to the problem of how to reduce poverty. If they are to be effective, they will have to become less isolated and more responsive to small farmers.


Farmers first

In recent years a group of interdisciplinary researchers has been engaged in a process of critical thinking about impact assessment techniques, ‘farmer first’ approaches to agricultural research, and a systems view of innovation. Under an initiative known as the Institutional Learning and Change (ILAC), the participants believe that collaborative research programmes could play a key role in pro-poor innovation. First, however, organisations need to develop their capacity for learning, and to transform the patterns of interaction with other actors in the system. This is possible through action research and action learning.


Institutional learning and change

Current methods of impact assessment assume that there is a direct causal link between research and impact, and that this can be measured. Yet many studies have shown that impact assessments are ineffective in enabling decision makers to plan for change, and fail to recognise that the way research is carried out influences its impacts on rural livelihoods. In response, the Institutional Learning and Change (ILAC) initiative focuses on three inter-related elements:


* Institutions: Agricultural innovation takes place within systems with multiple actors at different levels, with different norms and rules governing their interactions.

* Experiential learning: involves analysing and understanding the work we do, and regards learning as a social process of reflection and analysis.

* Change: This involves ensuring that lessons learned are used to improve both ongoing and future programmes.


To understand the complexity of change, the ILAC team compiled a series of case studies of research centres that have adopted alternative approaches, such as facilitating participatory decision making, establishing learning alliances or promoting new evaluation techniques. The case studies have been published in a series of ILAC Briefs.


The ILAC initiative combines action research and action learning to foster knowledge production, capacity development and behavioural change. ILAC builds on the idea that learning organisations are able to embrace experimentation, and tolerate risks and ambiguity. They are also willing to work with partners to reach a shared understanding, and to work towards participatory decision making.


The ILAC team has captured many stories of change at major research centres such as the International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). These ‘innovation histories’ often show that when researchers adopt a more open approach and are willing to learn together with non-researchers, they are able to increase the uptake and impact of their research. For decades research was stuck in a paradigm of one-way technology transfer, with limited uptake by farmers. The ILAC initiative has led to new approaches and tools that are now being used to move agricultural research towards pro-poor innovation. One of these approaches has involved the creation of learning alliances.



Learning alliances in practice

The learning alliance approach emphasises the processes of innovation, and involves collective learning by research organisations, donor agencies, policy makers, civil society organisations and even private businesses. The alliances enable participants to learn across organisational and geographical boundaries, and provide vehicles for collaboration and sharing knowledge about approaches, methods and policies that work, and those that do not. By improving the flows of information and knowledge, these multi-stakeholder platforms help to speed up the process of identifying and developing innovations, and ensuring their adoption by farmers.


Non-pesticidal management

One of these learning alliances is working to reduce the amounts of pesticides used by farmers in Andhra Pradesh, India. The alliance members include a parastatal agency, the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, various community-based organisations and a network of NGOs. The alliance grew out of informal collaborations between research centres and civil society organisations to explore innovative practices such as lighting bonfires to deal with insect pests. Through a collective learning process, the alliance developed a new system of non-pesticidal management (NPM) practices for a wide range of crops.


In 2002 the Centre for World Solidarity (CWS), an NGO based in Hyderabad, began to disseminate information about the system via its network of partners. Few farmers in the region use formal extension services, but in less than four years, the NPM system had been adopted by 100,000 farmers in 1500 villages. The programme has been a remarkable success. Many farming communities have now completely eliminated the use of pesticides.


The learning alliance also provided a platform for scaling up the use of the system as an alternative to the input-intensive practices that were likely to fail. The alliance has therefore helped not only to reduce environmental stress, but also to open up new markets for the region’s organic produce, both local and international, thus increasing the incomes of many small farmers. Most important, much of the alliance’s success has been due to women who took the lead in what is arguably one of the world’s largest ecological farming projects. As the collective learning has continued, the alliance has helped farmers move away from technology-based methods of pest management, and to adopt a broader approach known as community-managed sustainable agriculture. The Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA), an NGO that grew out of CWS, has also adopted the principle of collective learning, and intends to create new institutional platforms and learning alliances to scale up the approach and transform agricultural practices throughout the state.


The NPM alliance is working to improve the livelihoods of small farmers, tenants and farm workers using local resources. It is managed by community organisations using novel extension mechanisms and farmers as resource persons. The CSA, through its partners, provides technical support and training, and takes the lead in bringing together stakeholders at various levels. Buoyed by its success, the NPM alliance has sought and received policy support to extend the community-managed sustainable agriculture approach to 1 million farmers in Andhra Pradesh in the next four years.


Woman operating a weeding tool

System of rice intensification

Learning alliances may also be facilitated by outside agencies, such as when the various members have different ideas about the process of innovation, and bringing them together could lead to conflict. In Orissa, a poor state in eastern India, the Xavier Institute of Management was able to apply its understanding of innovation systems to facilitate a new learning alliance to promote a new way of growing rice. Known as the system of rice intensification (SRI), this is an interesting agro-ecological innovation that was developed in Madagascar and is now in use in 30 countries. Unlike conventional methods of raising productivity through genetic improvement and increasing inputs, SRI relies on providing an enabling environment for the rice plant to express itself fully. The system involves a combination of several principles, including the use of organic inputs, alternate wetting and drying, increased spacing between plants, and transplanting the plants while they are young. Although the method has been successful among farmers across the world, it has met with resistance from rice research organisations.


An earlier study of SRI had found that actors such as government departments and civil society organisations elsewhere in India were working independently, and sometimes in adversarial ways. Recognising these institutional pitfalls in a complex environment where none of the actors had complete information or access to resources, the Xavier Institute organised a workshop for dialogue on SRI at the state level. The workshop did not focus only on formal knowledge, and so provided an atmosphere in which farmers and NGOs felt able to contribute, and agriculture department officials were willing to learn from others.


The trust built by the alliance, and its ability to link isolated success stories, have led to greater policy support for SRI in Orissa state. One large private donor has chosen Orissa as one of the states for testing ways to improve productivity in rainfed rice-growing areas, and the government of India has provided support through its National Food Security Mission for the state. All of this has happened due to the new approach of working together, rather than just the large numbers in the field. The open sharing of results has helped to improve accountability, and the various actors have repositioned themselves to explore possible synergies with others. The experience has encouraged other Indian states to create similar learning alliances. Thus Orissa, a late starter in SRI technologically, has provided the institutional lead for the rest of the country.


Open communication

The success of the learning alliance approach is based on the ability of the facilitating organisations to open up channels of communication between diverse partners. In particular, organisations with experience in designing and testing analytical tools and methods can facilitate collective learning within and between organisations. Not all of these need to be formal, novel institutional mechanisms. The SRI alliance organises experience-sharing workshops, for example, which ensure the much faster spread of ideas than is possible using conventional extension methods.


In the case of the NPM learning alliance, the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture has only 15 staff members but has been able to scale up the NPM approach through its network of grassroots organisations. Donor agencies can often play an important role by being active members of a learning alliance. One donor, for example, facilitated a popular SRI internet group in India, and invited all its partners to participate, as well as many other actors involved in promoting SRI across the country. The learning alliance concept will continue to evolve in various sectors as the participants gain experience in how best they can be facilitated, and in managing the new expectations that they are creating.


Learning together often pushes existing institutional arrangements to become more open. The results can be surprising, sometimes leading to reversals of traditional roles – extension agencies and civil society organisations doing research, and research institutions repositioning themselves as knowledge brokers. They could lead to new learning laboratories and platforms where researchers can learn, reflect and report even if they do not have all the answers. This can lead to new knowledge emerging from healthier and more equal interactions among hitherto powerful scientific hierarchies. All of these changes are to be welcomed if we are serious about addressing the complex challenges facing the ‘bottom billion’ in the future.



http://www.capacity.org/en/journal/policy/learning_alliances_for_poverty_reduction

Copyright @ Capacity.org

Knowledge Intensive Agriculture Session
The sharing session and this above mentioned paper call for action research and action learning moving away from powerful scientific hierarchies. Unlike in the past where farmers, extension agencies and civil society organisations passively accept the technologies delivered by researchers. These linear approaches of the ‘Green Revolution’ were based on the objective of increasing food supplies in resource-rich regions, using improved crop varieties that require increased external inputs

When the farmers' jury gave its verdict

by Sreelatha Menon, December 27, 2009, Business Standard

Who is an agricultural expert? The practising farmer or the numerous graduates who pass from agricultural universities?

For this country, the latter is considered the expert, while the former — who can feel the winds and predict the rains, touch the soil and scan the health of the seedlings in its womb — is nothing more than a labourer.

Not only is he considered unfit to be a teacher and a scholar of the subject and partner in research and policy-making, but is reduced to a life of extreme poverty, having to pull rickshaws or do construction work in the cities every two months, to raise money to invest in the fields. This, again, leads to the question of a country’s seed sovereignty, a matter over which no policy maker is losing sleep.

This month, 30 farmers — women and men — gathered as a jury in Karnataka and quizzed a number of agricultural scientists on the theme of ‘Democratisation of Agricultural Research. The farmers’ jury, or Raita Teerpu, then gave their verdict.

 

Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar on Friday hoped that the recently signed lndia-US accord on knowledge initiative in agriculture will help increase farm production and productivity. He said that for implementation of these initiatives \"we would require a change in our research and research management paradigms.\"
Food subsidy Bill to be reviewed in May, says Pawar
by Ashok B Sharma, The Financial Express, 25 March, 2006
On his visit to the US, the prime minister made a deal on nuclear energy and another on agriculture. Because of the furore over the former, the latter seems to have gone unnoticed. It should not be. India has asked for US help to develop drought-resistant crop varieties, reduce post-harvest losses, take information about improved technologies directly to farmers and provide training in sanitary and phytosanitary standards. Training to improve food standards will be welcome since India is very poor in this regard. Indian exports are returned, sometimes because buyers use phytosanitary standards as a protectionist tool but also because the products are contaminated or substandard.
Deceptive Sense Of Bounty
by Suman Sahai, THE TIMES OF INDIA, 12 September, 2005

Clearly there is much more at stake here than a choice between over 98 varieties of our freely available native baingan and one genetically modified version promoted by a multinational company.

This is a battle about the politics of knowledge.

For about six decades private companies, governments and international food experts have focussed on increasing the volume of food production. Thus, any technology that gave higher output was deemed to be progress and those who challenged its side-effects or proposed alternatives which could produce as much or more at lower ecological and social costs were denounced as being regressive.- Bt brinjal and the politics of knowledge Rajni Bakshi

 

Sastry Garu responds:

Jai Ram Ramesh’s moratorium should be treated as only a Dunkirk :  the real battles are ahead, with outcomes not too certain unless civil society improves and marshalls its strength in a more focused way.

Ultimately, the matter needs further broadening, to cover several fronts.  In the kind of world we have, what else can be expected but eventual verdicts tilting towards Bio-giants ?  There is already fatigue in Indian civil society because of this single Bt. Brinjal struggle !

 

The more one thinks, the more one turns to Gandhi and his Oceanic Circles.  If you aggregate a problem globally, there is a global giant to be faced.  Food should be produced locally and self sufficiency attained locally.  The reconstruction of polity on Gandhian lines also needs to be made part of discourse even on matters like Bt. Brinjal, as that distinguished scientist Dr. Shiv Chopra did in his illuminating presentation only day before yesterday, which I had the privilege to attend.  Such broadening of the front may win more adherents to the civil society, whom we need badly as we are too few now.

 

Subcategories

KIA-documents Article Count:  6

KIA-news & events Article Count:  3

KIA-backgrounder Article Count:  1

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