The need to build upon farmer practice and knowledge: Reminders from selected upland conservation projects and policies

On-farm research and development projects in SE Asia's uplands have addressed problems of ecosystems degradation. Farmer adoption, however, of land conservation technologies has generally not resulted or has not been sustainable. This paper examines four agroforestry projects and two policy approaches meant to protect upland resources. Promoted innovations and farmer adoption are described. Six lessons are reemphasized:

• problem identification and prioritization require great care;
• farmer technical approaches to problems and their underlying technical knowledge should be carefully considered;
• appropriateness of technical innovations to target populations and environments should be continually evaluated;
• farmer participation in the adaptation of a 'menu of technical offerings efficiently combines researcher-farmer inputs;
• research or implementation policies should be reevaluated as adoption gets underway; and
• incentives need careful thought.

Overall, variable scale diagnosis and design that is unbiased towards pre-selected technologies is needed. Lessons learned contributed to farmer-participatory agroforestry research being conducted in an upland rice-based system in the Philippines. (author)