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Technology systems for small farmers: Issues and options
744
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
material and disciplinary writing over the last decade.
Lipton, Michael with Richard Longhurst (1989) New Seeds and Poor People. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (473 pp., cloth, $35).
Kesseba, Abbas ed. (1989) Technology Systems f o r Small Farmers: Issues and Options. Boulder, CO: Westview Press (229 pp., paperback, $18.95).
Lipton and Longhurst have produced an extensive analytical survey of the results of modern varieties of cereals in diverse social contexts that reaffirms the conclusions of many previous studies of the Green Revolution, notably those o[ Solon Barraclough and Keith Griffin. New technology alone is not sufficient to improve the livelihood of the poor. New Seeds contains a balanced and detailed examination of the specific agronomic and labor contexts of different classes in different regions and shows how particular groups are likely to gain or lose with modern varieties. The authors seek to redirect policies and research on both institutions and agrotechnology as the basis for more balanced growth and development. The international agricultural research centers are seen as having more political ability to redirect efforts than national systems. The book focuses on agrotechnological reform, however, with no new local institutional vision or analysis of the prevailing political incentives at work in the C G I A R and its member institutes.
This collection was born of a 1988 IFAD seminar and a growing awareness within the UN system that top-down, mechanistic approaches and Western technological packages are ineffective in assisting the rural poor, especially the most disadvantaged. The essays review IFAD, World Bank, and ISNAR experience and develop the arguments for and practical steps to implement a more low-cost, participatory and self-reliant process of technological development and application. It is heartening to see these parts of the C G I A R system expanding knowledge and support for adaptive research and participatory praxis. Still unresolved for these authors is the connection of such research to national research systems; setting up new locally controlled institutions is not yet on their horizon. Also limiting is the intellectual insularity in most essays; the work of the ILO, the Intermediate Technology Development Group and others on the cutting edge is not included in this debate.
Kloppenburg, Jack R. (1988) First the Seed: The Political Economy o f Plant Biotechnology, 1492-2000. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press (349 pp., cloth, $32.50). This is an important work for anyone concerned with the future sustainability of the world food system. Kloppenburg has produced an analytical history of the growing commodification of seeds in the United States and bow it has worked to disempower farmers and consumers in the 20th century. Historically, farmers reproduced their own seeds in concert with governmentsponsored plant breeding programs. But advances in hybridization allowed seed companies to change the division of labor in their own favor with scientists as employees and farmers as dependent consumers. An important step was manipulation of the legislative process to gain property rights to plant germplasm. Kloppenburg has assembled a compelling body of data on specific corporations, actors, and institutions. He also has cogent prescriptions for regaining social control; unfortunately they require an informed, politically motivated citizenry in the North and South, a commodity in short supply everywhere.
Long, Norman ed. (1989) Encounters at ttle Interface: A Perspective on Social Discontinuities in Rural Development. Wageningen, Netherlands: Wageningen Agricultural University, Studies in Sociology 27, and Lanham, MD: UNIPUB (276 pp., paperback, $23). One of the most important yet understudied issues of rural development practice is the fit or misfit between projects and local social realities and world models. These valuable essays focus on this crucial area of implementation research, building in large measure on Latin American case material. The interaction of bureaucrats aml producers begins with differing life experiences, intermediate structures, and social constructions of knowledge. Both attempt to build bridges, but typically there are unequal skills and resources and thus unequal control over the definition of the interaction. Peruvian plant scientists, for example, provided new crop varieties and simultaneously marginalized local knowledge; development thus became a commodity controlled by experts. The essays sketch dimensions and themes of an alternative actor-oriented analysis, by building concepts from local experience, interface analysis provides perceptive judgments on state-peasant relations and local political space while escaping the abstractions of macroeconomics and sociology.
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
material and disciplinary writing over the last decade.
Lipton, Michael with Richard Longhurst (1989) New Seeds and Poor People. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (473 pp., cloth, $35).
Kesseba, Abbas ed. (1989) Technology Systems f o r Small Farmers: Issues and Options. Boulder, CO: Westview Press (229 pp., paperback, $18.95).
Lipton and Longhurst have produced an extensive analytical survey of the results of modern varieties of cereals in diverse social contexts that reaffirms the conclusions of many previous studies of the Green Revolution, notably those o[ Solon Barraclough and Keith Griffin. New technology alone is not sufficient to improve the livelihood of the poor. New Seeds contains a balanced and detailed examination of the specific agronomic and labor contexts of different classes in different regions and shows how particular groups are likely to gain or lose with modern varieties. The authors seek to redirect policies and research on both institutions and agrotechnology as the basis for more balanced growth and development. The international agricultural research centers are seen as having more political ability to redirect efforts than national systems. The book focuses on agrotechnological reform, however, with no new local institutional vision or analysis of the prevailing political incentives at work in the C G I A R and its member institutes.
This collection was born of a 1988 IFAD seminar and a growing awareness within the UN system that top-down, mechanistic approaches and Western technological packages are ineffective in assisting the rural poor, especially the most disadvantaged. The essays review IFAD, World Bank, and ISNAR experience and develop the arguments for and practical steps to implement a more low-cost, participatory and self-reliant process of technological development and application. It is heartening to see these parts of the C G I A R system expanding knowledge and support for adaptive research and participatory praxis. Still unresolved for these authors is the connection of such research to national research systems; setting up new locally controlled institutions is not yet on their horizon. Also limiting is the intellectual insularity in most essays; the work of the ILO, the Intermediate Technology Development Group and others on the cutting edge is not included in this debate.
Kloppenburg, Jack R. (1988) First the Seed: The Political Economy o f Plant Biotechnology, 1492-2000. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press (349 pp., cloth, $32.50). This is an important work for anyone concerned with the future sustainability of the world food system. Kloppenburg has produced an analytical history of the growing commodification of seeds in the United States and bow it has worked to disempower farmers and consumers in the 20th century. Historically, farmers reproduced their own seeds in concert with governmentsponsored plant breeding programs. But advances in hybridization allowed seed companies to change the division of labor in their own favor with scientists as employees and farmers as dependent consumers. An important step was manipulation of the legislative process to gain property rights to plant germplasm. Kloppenburg has assembled a compelling body of data on specific corporations, actors, and institutions. He also has cogent prescriptions for regaining social control; unfortunately they require an informed, politically motivated citizenry in the North and South, a commodity in short supply everywhere.
Long, Norman ed. (1989) Encounters at ttle Interface: A Perspective on Social Discontinuities in Rural Development. Wageningen, Netherlands: Wageningen Agricultural University, Studies in Sociology 27, and Lanham, MD: UNIPUB (276 pp., paperback, $23). One of the most important yet understudied issues of rural development practice is the fit or misfit between projects and local social realities and world models. These valuable essays focus on this crucial area of implementation research, building in large measure on Latin American case material. The interaction of bureaucrats aml producers begins with differing life experiences, intermediate structures, and social constructions of knowledge. Both attempt to build bridges, but typically there are unequal skills and resources and thus unequal control over the definition of the interaction. Peruvian plant scientists, for example, provided new crop varieties and simultaneously marginalized local knowledge; development thus became a commodity controlled by experts. The essays sketch dimensions and themes of an alternative actor-oriented analysis, by building concepts from local experience, interface analysis provides perceptive judgments on state-peasant relations and local political space while escaping the abstractions of macroeconomics and sociology.