1. Impact as encounter:
Research and agrarian cultures
Todd A. Crane
todd.crane@wur.nl
Knowledge, Technology and Innovation

2. Achieving Impact
 Outline
 Introduction
 Conceptual clarifications
 Examples of encounter between research and practice
 Concluding remarks

3. Conceptual clarifications
 Impact
 Culture
 Behaviors and technologies (material)
 Social organization (institutional)
 Knowledge, beliefs and values (ideational)

4. Rural Development Goals
 Marka  Fulani
 Maintain extensive  Maintain extensive
agriculture pastoralism
 Intensify pastoralism  Intensify agriculture
 ↑ local authority  ↑ national authority
(Crane 2010)

5. Co-production of Knowledge?
 Micro-politics and soil fertility trials
 Cow manure applications
• 2t/year
• 5t/3years

6. Co-production of Knowledge?
 Micro-politics and soil fertility trials
 Goat and sheep manure?
• Goats and sheep integral part of HH economies
• Farmers’ LK values goat and sheep manure highly
 Why only cow manure?
• Presumed ↑ availability of cow manure
• Scientists’ access to standardized supply
• Publishability of rigorous results
• Political objective of program
 Led to comparative trials
 Validating local knowledge
 Illustrating ↑ diversity of options

7. Co-production of Knowledge?
 Rotational grazing
 Individual animals 1 2 3
 Entire herds
 Rehabilitation of grassland 4 5 6
 Intensify production
1 2 3 4 5 6
(Crane 2009, Crane submitted)

8. ENSO-based forecasts and Ag. Risk Mgmt.
El Niño La Niña

9. Facilitating Use of ENSO-based DSS
 Enable users to evaluate forecasts
 Publish forecast history
 Publish forecast performance records
 Explain probability upfront
 Integrate users’ feedback
 Content
 Form
 Medium
http://agroclimate.org/
(Crane et al. 2010)

10. Tradeoffs in climate adaptation
 Seasonal forecasts and agric. planning in Indonesia
 Is information the main constraint?
(Siregar and Crane 2011)

11. Action Research
 Convergence of Sciences – Strengthening
Innovation Systems (http://www.cos-sis.org/)
 Benin, Ghana, Mali
 Simultaneous on farm-innovation AND institutional
change
• Undirected change
• Avoiding preset indicators
• Not modeled, but practiced

12. Change as self-organization
 Farmers’ practice as
 Dynamic
 Heterogenous
 Complex Policy Science
 Science
 Policy
 Development 3.0 ? Practice
Leeuwis, Sherwood and Crane 2012

13. Concluding Remarks on Achieving Impact
 Tradeoffs, thus “impacts”, are inherently political
 Change is too complex to plan or predict perfectly,
it is emergent from practice and relationships
 Impact requires stepping outside of systems perspectives
 Achieving impact is a process, not a goal
 Avoid pre-defined targets (and indicators)
 Research on research

14. References
 Crane, T A. 2009. "If farmers are first, do pastoralists come second? Political ecology and participation
.
in central Mali, in Farmer First Revisited: Innovation for Agricultural Research and Development. Edited
"
by I. Scoones and J. Thompson, pp. 88-91. Bourton on Dunsmore, UK: Practical Action Publishing.
 —. 2010. Of models and meanings: Cultural resilience in socio-ecological systems. Ecology and Society
15:19.
 —. submitted. Participatory technology development as cultural encounter between farmers and
researchers: Bringing science and technology studies into agricultural anthropology. Culture,
Agriculture, Food and Environment.
 Crane, T A., C. Roncoli, and G. Hoogenboom. 2011. Adaptation to climate change and climate
.
variability: The importance of understanding agriculture as performance. NJAS - Wageningen Journal of
Life Sciences 57:179-185.
 Crane, T A., C. Roncoli, J. Paz, N. E. Breuer, K. Broad, K. T Ingram, and G. Hoogenboom. 2010. Forecast
. .
skill and farmers' skills: Seasonal climate forecasts and risk management among Georgia (U.S.) farmers.
Weather, Climate and Society 2:44-59.
 Röling, N., D. Hounkonnou, D. Kossou, T W. Kuyper, S. Nederlof, O. Sakyi-Dawson, M. Traoré, and A.
.
van Huis. 2012. Diagnosing the scope for innovation: Linking smallholder practices and institutional
context: Introduction to the special issue. NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences 60–63:1-6.
 Sherwood, S., C. Leeuwis, and T A. Crane. 2012. Development 3.0: Development practice in transition.
.
Farming Matters 12:40-41.
 Siregar, P R., and T A. Crane. 2011. Climate Information and Agricultural Practice in Adaptation to
. .
Climate Variability: The Case of Climate Field Schools in Indramayu, Indonesia. Culture, Agriculture,
Food and Environment 33:55-69.

15. Questions and comments?
© Wageningen UR

16. Knowledge frames
(Rickards et al. 2012)

17. Quantum physics ?
 Is light a particle or a
wave?
 Yes, depending on
what tools you use to
analyse it.
 Systems is just one
analytical approach
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7059/full/nature04040.html

18. Farmer Back to Farmer
Rhoades RE, Booth RH (1982) Farmer-back-to-farmer: A model for
generating acceptable agricultural technology. Agricultural Administration
11:127-137.