Policy Conclusions

Here, a number of lessons and alternative policies and institutions that support strong FO-research-extension linkages for technology development and dissemination are highlighted. Given the importance of FO’s in achieving concrete livelihood outcomes for their members, addressing these issues will most likely translate into improvements in livelihoods.

Institutional Context encouraging Linkages between the Public Sector, the Private Sector and Civil Society

In all the countries studied there were important political, economic and institutional changes occurring linked to the disengagement of the state, economic liberalisation and decentralisation: At the same time, in many contexts farmers’ organisations are gaining more autonomy and increasing their economic and technical capacities. The combination of these processes has had the effect of encouraging a re-think of the division of responsibilities between public sector research and extension bodies, farmers’ organisations and civil society organisations such as international NGOs. The latter actors have taken on a bigger role in the financing and provision of services, while the public sector bodies have retreated to performing a smaller range of functions (quality control, provision of technical expertise….) - but they typically suffer from severe funding constraints limiting even these roles. FO’s and other civil society organisations have taken on critical responsibilities once seen to be reserved for States – for example, provision of extension and research advice, community development support, direct provision of agricultural inputs etc. In this context linkages between public and private sector and civil society have become essential to ensure farmers have access to agricultural services

The Important Role of Farmers’ Organisations for Technology Development

Fostering strong relationships between agricultural research institutions, extension bodies and farmers’ organisations seems to be an important means by which appropriate and participatory technology development can be encouraged and assisted in rural areas. Strong relationships tend to involve contractual arrangements for the provision of services, representation on decision making bodies of research and extension, and FO access to funds to pay for these services. This is the case both for the development of appropriate technologies and their dissemination among farmers.

Characteristics of Farmers’ Organisations that make Successful Partnerships

This study revealed that the FO’s that were most successful in expressing and satisfying their needs in the areas of technology generation and dissemination had one or many of the following characteristics:

• possessing several organisational levels (at least three) from base groups (villages or districts) to Federation level; this can include one or several intermediate levels of representation (in the case of the two Federations in Guinea and the Fédération des Unions des Groupements Naam in Burkina Faso)
• based on free membership around common interests
• access to diverse sources of funding. It is recognised that in order to gain the power to demand specific services suited to their members needs’, farmers’ organisations need to have access to resources that enable them to commission and finance agricultural research and extension. In order for FO’s to be able to do this they either need to build up their own income (through membership fees, economic activities which are sustainable and yield clear material benefits to members, and relationships with government or international donors) or gain access to research funds, via such mechanisms as competitive research grants or jointly managed research and extension funds.
• based around successful and remunerative economic activities (sesame production in The Gambia; fruit and vegetable production, storage and marketing in Cameroon)
• benefiting from the animation, capacity-building (training, business management etc) and input/marketing support of external organisations
• based on traditional modes of organisation, respecting agreed social rules on interaction and authority (FUGN, Burkina Faso) or based on legally recognised rules and responsibilities for associations (e.g. 1990 law of association in Cameroon and subsequent legislation)

Small, disparate and unorganised groups of farmers created to serve a specific concern of international projects and extension services (e.g. contact groups to pass on extension messages or to carry out on-farm trials), and which do not benefit from national legislation recognising the role of farmers’ organisations in the economy, were generally much less sustainable without outside resources and much less capable of effectively expressing the needs and demands of their members. People come together in these groups willingly however as they are seen as a way of accessing external resources – whether that be agricultural equipment, technical knowledge or inputs (cf Ghana and the Gambia cases).

Capacity Building: Strengthening Farmers’ Organisations

The existence of strong organisations, backed by their members and federated to some degree (regional or national level) so as to give them more weight with public bodies, is critical if agricultural services are to become demand led and downwardly accountable. Hence strengthening the capacities of farmers’ organisations is a pre-requisite for balanced and productive partnerships between research and farmers’ organisations. Particular attention needs to be paid to the following points.

First, institutional support for farmers’ organisations (information, training, use of participatory methodologies, equipment and finance¼ .) is required so that they will have the physical, financial and technical capacities to ensure that the requests of their members rise from the grassroots to the top of the organisation, and that they will possess the ability to formalise these requests and disseminate the results obtained. This support could strengthen internal communication and the links between farmers’ representatives and the grassroots, thus improving the representativity, legitimacy, and hence effectiveness of farmers’ organisations. Donors should be prepared to consider proposals aiming to facilitate the access of farmers’ organisations to funds reserved for capacity building and making competitive research funds accessible to them.

Second, financing mechanisms should be established which allow farmers’ organisations to commission research programmes. Such funding could not come solely from farmers/members of farmers’ organisations. It could include, for example, State resources made available to farmers’ organisations and used by them as a function of their needs, or through competitive research funds.

Third, the establishment of frameworks or fora for collaboration and co-ordination (at the local, regional and national levels) should strengthen the capacities of farmers’ organisations to make propositions and to negotiate with, agricultural service providers in the public an private sector - as long as representation is sufficient.

Finally, it is evident that initiatives to strengthen farmers’ organisations must be based on a secure socio-political and legal context, where there is guaranteed freedom of association and legislation explicitly recognising the economic and social roles of FO’s..

Public Agricultural Research Services

In a context where partnerships with a range of actors have become a practical (and financial) imperative, national agricultural research institutions have to create conditions that encourage dialogue with other actors as they are in a pivotal position. The ability to do this depends on:

• the regionalisation of agricultural research institutes so as to improve its orientation towards operational research;
• the development of systems approaches to agricultural research (e.g. FSR);
• strengthening capacities for socio-economic analysis;
• participation in a collaborative definition of regional development priorities;
• implementation of participatory methodologies and approaches which results in the establishment of a real and continuous dialogue with farmers (e.g. using PRA, PAR, Delta etc);
• the creation of conditions and incentives (career and remuneration packages) which encourage researchers to collaborate with farmers’ organisations (e.g. CAMES)
• the development of national action plans for promoting research-extension-farmers’ organisation partnerships.

Public Agricultural Extension Services

Extension services have to be involved in this process more than they have been involved in agricultural research in the past, so that the agricultural research linkage with development objectives becomes serious and effective. These linkages need to be defined in a flexible way according to specific contexts, but taking into account:

• the reorganisation of agricultural support services that is currently taking place in most countries in the region;
• the technical advisory and support role for farmers that has already been taken up by some farmers’ organisations.

Establishing Effective Fora for Co-ordination and Co-operation

Co-ordination and collaboration bodies that link representatives of agricultural research, extension and farmers’ organisations (e.g. regional Research-Extension-Liaison Committees in Ghana) at the regional and national level seem to be indispensable for promoting closer research-extension-farmer collaboration. However, these bodies have often not functioned so well as a channel for farmers to express their needs and requests in practice.

In order to improve the ways in which these fora function, they require specific material support to enable them to cover the costs of holding meetings etc. Donors can provide funding for such measures. For example, the World Bank has historically supported these structures through its national level agricultural service support projects (ASP – e.g. in The Gambia) – although these tend to be projects funded for a defined period. Once the funding ceases, the actors find it difficult to cover the costs of regular meetings. Hence, the sustainability of fora for collaboration must be sought through the establishment of appropriate mechanisms for national/endogenous funding as project funding tends to be time limited.

Jointly Managed Funds for Research and Extension

Regional agricultural research and extension funds should be created, governed by a council of representatives from civil society, FO’s and public research and extension bodies. These can be used to support agricultural research on topics relevant to farmers and assist civil society and farmers’ organisations in drafting requests for agricultural research. They could be established as competitive research funds (following the example of the Hill Agriculture Research Project in Nepal, or the World Bank’s numerous competitive funds in Africa and Asia), but in this case farmers’ organisations may need technical assistance in preparing successful research proposals.

The Role of NGO’s

International NGO’s (e.g. Catholic Relief Services and ActionAid in The Gambia) and civil society organisations (e.g. the Diocèse de Diébougou in Burkina Faso) have played, and continue to play, an important role in the strengthening of farmers’ organisations. However, while their role as intermediaries is useful and sometimes indispensable, it is important to avoid their intervention acting as an obstacle to the establishment of direct relations between organised producers and other economic and institutional stakeholders. It is also necessary to address the problem of the sustainability of farmers’ organisations after NGO’s cease to provide financial support.

The Role of the Private Sector

Private sector organisations can play a critical and positive role in both building the technical capacities of farmers’ organisations (extension advice and access to inputs/markets) and giving them a voice in setting prices of commodities (as with the Ghana Cotton Company in northern Ghana). However the case studies revealed that private sector companies were usually unlikely to form direct partnerships with remote farmers’ organisations. They tend to prefer establishing linkages with larger, regional or national, federated farmers’ movements (e.g. FUGN, Burkina Faso), or meet farmers’ demand through an existing intermediary – such as an international NGO (e.g. Catholic Relief Services and ActionAid The Gambia) or State department (Ghana seed production programme), or an internationally supported national NGO such as AGROCOM in Cameroon . This tendency is often due to factors such as the risky and unreliable nature of peasant agricultural production in the Sahel, poor infrastructure and communications links. Hence in the case of thee production of cowpea in Burkina Faso, Nestlé decided not to continue with a contract to purchase cowpea produced by farmers’ groups in Diébougou.

Private sector involvement in developing new technologies for agricultural production, and direct linkages with research (commissioning research) has gone further in Ghana. However, this case illustrates the care required in the way private sector engagement is promoted. Here it is not farmers’ that create the agenda and constitute the "demand" for new appropriate technologies, but rather it is the companies, research or extension services that define needs and who then engage farmers in the production process. This limited degree of farmer participation, in the context of a weak national farmers’ movement, does not help to ensure that agricultural services serve the livelihood priorities of poor farmers.

Sharing Lessons from Successful Partnerships

Lessons from case studies of successful partnerships need to be shared and disseminated widely. This can be done through national stakeholder workshops, WECARD sub-regional workshops, and through working directly with farmers’ organisations and their members. Other initiatives at an international level, such as the World Bank and IFAP’s (International Federation of Agricultural Producers) initiative to disseminate lessons through electronic media, should also be supported (see www.worldbank.org and search under producer organisations). WECARD could itself contribute much to this process at the sub-regional level by increasing its own expertise in: the development and implementation of training modules on effective mechanisms for research-extension-farmers’ organisation collaboration; capacity to provide advice on reorienting national agricultural research to make it client led and demand driven, and training in participatory research and extension methodologies; and establishing effective sub-regional information sharing networks – including wider availability of information, reports and training materials on Internet.