Farming systems development: Synthesizing indigenous and scientific knowledge systems

Agricultural development strategies to date were chiefly based on Western technological solutions, with mixed success rates. Farming Systems Research (FSR) was advanced as a way to increase the use of indigenous knowledge of farming to make new technologies more adaptable and appropriate to farming conditions. FSR has enabled researchers to focus attention on people and their knowledge by increasing people's participation in problem identification and new technology validation. In practice, though, FSR continues to be a top-down approach: technologies continue to be developed (in most cases) in the exogenous, Western knowledge system. Little has been done to develop indigenous technology generating and diffusing capacities already present in the rural areas. In this paper, a model adapted from Bell (1979) will be advanced that is based on cooperation and collaboration between the exogenous and indigenous knowledge systems leading to a synthesis of the two. The underlying principle of the model is that the ultimate solution for rural development is not the dumping of more scientists upon rural people (of whatever discipline) to make exogenously-generated technologies more adaptable and in-line with people's problems, but to strengthen, empower, and legitimize indigenous capacities for identifying problems and developing solutions for these problems. The “empowerment” of the indigenous knowledge/technology system (however difficult that may be politically) so that it has equal footing with Western knowledge may well be the most important step in a strategy of enabling the people in the developing countries themselves to alleviate their poverty. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1991