Research Results

Strong national federated farmers’ organisations have emerged in, for example, Senegal, Guinea and Burkina Faso These have succeeded to some degree in challenging state service providers to respond to farmer priorities and demands. They have also managed to establish contractual partnerships with public sector service providers and, in some cases, raise sufficient resources to purchase their services. Farmers’ organisations (FO's) have been less successful, particularly in articulating with public service providers, in Ghana. Ghanaian extension and agricultural research services have shied away from developing close partnerships with FO's due to their perceived political partiality and lack of technical capacity. Ghanaian extension services have been decentralised and are now subject to coordination by the new District Assemblies, and fora have been created for the coordination of regional extension and research activities - in which farmer representatives participate alongside research and extension workers (RELCs). However, these mechanisms have been criticised as being dominated by research and extension representatives and ineffective in making public service providers more demand led and downwardly accountable. Further, it is unclear whether decentralisation has the effect of making authorities and services more upwardly or downwardly accountable.

The results from the case studies are presented below under the following headings

• type and size of collective structure involved in technology generation process;
• initiators of collaboration with agricultural research and extension;
• type of linkage;
• sources of funding;
• ways in which public agricultural service providers respond to farmers.

The case studies revealed four main types of farmers’ organisation:

• farmers' organisations with several levels of organisation (at least three), from base groups (village or district level) 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);
• FO’s that assemble representatives from a number of village groups in and area or district (the case of Nyameng Kunda Apex Organisation in The Gambia);
• farmers’ organisations comprising more or less numerous structures operating solely at village level (the three cases in Cameroon);
• forms of organisation similar to base groups at village level, with no clearly defined structure (small localised producer groups, contact groups) nor collectively defined aims (case of contact groups, the aim of which is defined by extension structures). The numerical size of these groups varies considerably (from three producers in an example in The Gambia to 58 groups in Ghana in the case of Asuoyeboa co-operative, then contact groups of about a dozen members formed by extension structures in a seed production programme). The common denominator among these forms of organisation continues to be atomisation, absence of knowledge-sharing frameworks between local grassroots groups, a limited range of activities in functions defined by development intervention structures and, consequently, a very low capacity for collective action.

In four cases out of the sixteen, requests came from a farmers' organisation, or in approximately a quarter of the organisations in our sample. In other cases that involved farmers’ organisations, linkages with research lead to another actor being involved, playing the role of making contacts and expressing technical needs. That actor could be a project (Relance-café (RC2 ) in Guinea, Développement Paysannal et Gestion de Terroir (DPGT) in Cameroon, Projet de Diversification des Exportations Agricoles (PDEA) in Cameroon, Lowland Agricultural Development Project (LADEP) in The Gambia) or a private company (Ghana Cotton Company). In the case of Nyameng Kunda Apex in The Gambia, the farmers’ organisation is in contact with NGO’s, but at present linkages with research are non-existent. In other cases, diverse actors intervene in the linkages and these tend to call upon informal groups and contact groups: private firms (Ghana in two cases), religious organisations (Diébougou, Burkina Faso) or extension services (Ghana in two cases).

The most significant and successful institutional linkages tend to be formalised and established through direct bilateral contractual linkages (FUGN-INERA in Burkina Faso, FPFD-IRAG in Guinea, FUGN-IBE in Burkina Faso) or involve a third partner which is frequently a development project (RC² in Guinea in the case of FNPCG , DPGT in Cameroon in the case of APROSTOC or PDEA in the other cases).

In other cases, these linkages are less direct: via the Church - the Diocèse in Diébougou; through a development project, PDEA, in the case of Tignéré Co-operative in Cameroon. The linkages are actually very indirect in the case of the research, development and extension project LADEP in The Gambia, because in this case the contract is signed between research and the project "in the name of the farmers" who are at this stage of the project far too few in numbers for such a process to have much impact on livelihoods.

In all the other cases studied there is no formalised linkage between research and farmers' organisations due to the weakness of the institutions concerned: severe weakness of organisational dynamics in Ghana; an approach to providing support to farmers that favours the development of "loose" structures of the "contact group" type in Ghana and The Gambia; and a difficult institutional context for national agricultural research in Cameroon, which finds itself weak and unable to respond to farmers’ organisations that are in the process of strengthening and structuring their movement.

Sources of funding were diverse in each context:

• most frequently, NGO’s or development projects finance collaboration between research and farmers' organisations: a private foundation and development project in Burkina Faso in the case of the Diocèse of Diébougou; an internationally funded development project (PDEA) in the three cases in Cameroon; development projects in Guinea (RC²) and in Cameroon (DPGT);
• one case, where the farmers' organisation has achieved some real degree of autonomy in commanding agricultural services, and is able to finance agricultural research activities from external funds allocated directly to the organisation by donors (Fédération des Paysans of Fouta Djallon);
• two cases where collaboration with research is financed partially by projects or NGO’s as well as through the direct contribution of producers via their organisation (FUGN in Ouahigouya, Burkina Faso).

There are two principal types of collaboration between research and organised producers:

• an institutional type, where research institutions explicitly take into account the requests of farmers' organisations in programming and implementing activities (Guinea and Burkina Faso);
• an individual type, more or less formalised, which is very dependent on idiosyncratic variables such as the personality and motivation of the researchers and the leaders of farmers’ organisations involved (this is particularly the case in Cameroon).

In the other case studies, it is difficult to speak of modalities of collaboration between agricultural research and farmers' organisations because FO's are in some cases virtually non-existent at village level, and therefore in a weak position at the national level (Ghana), or in the process of emerging (The Gambia). Further, in these cases institutional approaches to working in rural areas tend to remain very conventional and "top-down".

In the majority of cases, demands for research (when the initiative comes from producers) often relate to relatively precise technical questions (case of drying fruit in Burkina Faso; wild rice with sorghum production in Cameroon; new cowpea varieties in Burkina Faso).

In certain situations, a technical inquiry is combined with a clear economic concern: in Burkina Faso, for women wanting to increase their income through producing better quality dried fruit; in North Cameroon, where groups want to increase their income by selling onions throughout the year; in Fouta Djallon, Guinea, where the farmers' organisations make requests to research that are focused on increasing the profitability of agricultural production; and finally, in forest Guinea, where coffee producers demonstrate concern for the "cost-effectiveness" of the technical model proposed to them by agricultural service providers (a model that is not relevant to their own livelihood strategies).

However, in Guinea (Fouta Djallon) a significant overlap between technical and organisational issues is noted: production is not developed within the organisation unless a connected and coherent bundle of actions can be undertaken that operate at each stage of the production chain (credit, input supply, technical information and marketing). In this case we can see an extension of actions undertaken at the institutional and policy levels into actions that defend producer interests, such as preserving access to national markets when this can be supplied by local production, all while maintaining a concern for competitiveness in relation to external markets (FPFD).

Section 6 presents the lessons for policy: how can external development actors support the farmers’ own organisations to become effective development partners?