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General Debate

Institutional Change starts with Personal Change: Institutionalizing PTD: A Policy Brief

General Discussion and Learning Themes on Institutionalising PTD

Debate per Case

General Discussion and Learning Themes on Institutionalising PTD

From the Proceedings

Standardizing and Packaging PTD for Institutionalisation

Roles and Competencies Revisited

Motivation and Incentives

Funds, Funding, and Accountability

Towards Sustainable Partnerships/Platforms

Farmer Organisational Development and PTD

Continue to learn on (institutionalisation of) PTD across Boundaries

Standardizing and Packaging PTD for Institutionalisation

(chapter 5 page 2)

If large research and extension organisations are to apply PTD in regular programmes, it should be formulated and packaged in practical terms, training manuals, field guidelines, so that staff not involved in the initial pilot activities can understand and apply it (Agritex, SFSP). This, however, will squelch the flexibility and room for innovation and adaptation required to make PTD meaningful in the field. One may argue that it may be too much to ask such flexibility from large bureaucratic organisations and that PTD would better be flourish in smaller institutes with the large ones giving specific technical support only and spread the technical outcomes (AME):

• Do we examples of successful packaging PTD while maintaining flexibility and adaptation? What make these successful?

• How does one design training and competence development to achieve this?

• Or should be more realistic and not burden large R&D organisations with the task of PTD?

General Discussion and Learning Themes on Institutionalising PTD

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Roles and Competencies Revisited

(all chapters)

Successful knowledge generation and spreading through PTD a revisiting of the traditional roles of farmers, extension, research, and other stakeholders. Is research doing technology transfer, can farmers do research, spread maybe unvalidated technologies? Institutionalisation of PTD is several hampered by the lack of clarity on these new roles and their relevance within the mandates of the various organisations.

• Are we able to clearly describe the new roles for the various actors in PTD? Do these sufficiently fall within the existing mandates of the respective institutions?

• What are competences for farmers and farmer organisations to sustain PTD? Do we have experience of successful capacity building within farmer organisations towards ownership for PTD?

• Have we experiences in which we made the new roles explicit within each organisation involved in PTD as a step in the institutionalisation process? What were the results?

General Discussion and Learning Themes on Institutionalising PTD

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Motivation and Incentives

(all chapters)

Individuals and organisations change towards PTD once they are motivated to do so, see clear benefits exceeding costs, get rewarded for initiatives towards PTD. Institutionalisation efforts will only be successful if these motivation issues are systematically addressed at all relevant levels. One big motivation is the success of pilot PTD activities, if properly documented or shared in any other way.

• Can we clearly formulate the (potential and real) benefits for various actors to be involved in PTD, be it farmers, extension and research field staff, their managers, the policy makers? And also the disincentives that prevent them to involve in PTD?

• Have we examples of how we explicitly paid attention to motivation and incentive issues in institutionalisation efforts? How was this done? What are the results? What do we learn?

• What are best practices in documenting PTD experiences? Other approaches to share successful PTD? Are these efforts sufficiently targeted? Who does this?

General Discussion and Learning Themes on Institutionalising PTD

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Funds, Funding, and Accountability

(all chapters)

Evidence shows that for PTD to become a sustainable process resources need to be mobilised beyond conventional project funds. With reduction in government research and extension funds, local governments, farmers and their organisations, other stakeholders, need to be called upon increasingly to support local level agricultural innovation. Management of resources, once available, should be decentralised to the lowest possible PTD implementation level to enable effective response to local issues and opportunities. Together with other agreed and open mechanisms for budgeting and financial reporting, this would lead to the transparency needed when various partners work together.

• After donor funding, do we rely on regular government R&D funds for doing PTD in the long run? If not what alternative funding sources and mechanisms have been or can be developed? Have we paid enough attention to local governments? Farmers’ own resources?

• Does decentralisation of decision making and management of (part of the) funds to PTD implementers lead to stronger PTD programmes? How can this be operationalised? How does one ensure adequate monitoring of finances?

• Examples of mechanisms to ensure transparency on funds and fund use among all partners

General Discussion and Learning Themes on Institutionalising PTD

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Towards Sustainable Partnerships/Platforms

(chapter 6 page 3-4)

Successful PTD requires effective collaboration of various stakeholders, and on an equal basis. Each PTD effort therefore develops some kind of institutional arrangement, platforms, where stakeholders meets, plan, monitor, adapt plans, and learn. The establishment of these need to be facilitated well to ensure ownership of all, equity in decision making, and attention to interests and needs of all partners. The longer-term perspectives of these platforms is often not clear in terms of facilitation and resources

• How can PTD platforms developed that become strong, meet interest of all, is owned by all? What are experiences?

• Who will play the key facilitating role after the end of projects. Where will resources be found to continue the platform 

General Discussion and Learning Themes on Institutionalising PTD

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Farmer Organisational Development and PTD

(chapter 4)

Almost all PTD efforts involve some form of farmer level organisational development. From quite informal groups of farmer experimenters meeting to learn and coordinate experimental efforts, through partnership with local level community structures such as village development committees, to the involvement of larger formal farmer organisations. Where PTD fundamentally is about empowerment, the involvement of the latter is needed to lobby for PTD and interact with research and development organisations on an equal basis. Yet, farmer organisations often do not have development of agricultural technologies high on their agenda. Flexible farmer experimenter networks may not fit into their formal structures. Links with local level development institutions may be weak.

• What are further experiences with formal farmer organisations taking the lead in sustaining PTD? What exactly is their role? What capacity building has been undertaken to enable these organisations play their role?

• How are efforts of farmer experimenters and their groups/networks linked to local level development organisations and the formal farmer organisations? How does these links ensure ownership and longer term sustainability of PTD.

General Discussion and Learning Themes on Institutionalising PTD

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Continue to learn on (institutionalisation of) PTD across Boundaries

Being effective in supporting PTD requires flexibility in adapting to new opportunities and conditions. Fresh PTD supporters wish to learn from the experienced people and pose new questions. PTD implementation and institutionalisation itself generates new insights and lessons. Yet, PTD practitioners, even in one (part of a) country work in different organisations with little history of sharing and joint learning. Others work elsewhere, on other sides of the globe. Time and money for sharing and learning is often limited as demands from daily duties are high.

• How do we organise ourselves to be able to continue to learn from PTD experiences and the institutionalisation efforts? How do we differentiate in this between learning among partners in joint PTD efforts, between PTD supporters in the country, in the region, globally?

• How can we make maximum use of new ICT possibilities while not doing away with direct interactions?

• How do we get resources for this? How do we ensure that we have time to be involved? How do we mobilise funds for these activities which often have low priority with donors?

• To what extend do we need facilitators to make this learning happen? Can we further define their task as link-worker (chapter 6)?

Continue to learn on (institutionalisation of) PTD across Boundaries

General Discussion and Learning Themes on Institutionalising PTD

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Debate per Case

Ampofo: IPM, Tanzania

Research’s dependency on extension in PTD; researchers become consultants?

Bunch: Farmers experimenters, Honduras

Innovations by farmers do not spread; farmer experimenters networks?

Campilan: PTD for improving sweet potato livelihood, Philippines

How to build a local R&D system?

Ejigu: Institutionalisation of farmer participatory research, Southern Ethiopia

Inter-institute partnership made structural; how to ensure adequately long time frames?

Hart: PTD for supporting black smallholder farmers, South Africa

Making training approaches more effective; locating PTD in research institute; continue learning and sharing of PTD experiences?

Hoang: PTD in community-based forestland management, Vietnam

Institutionalising the function of learning and sharing of PTD experiences?

Hocdé: Constructing Processes of PTD in Huetar Region, Northern Costa Rica

Farmer controlled PTD alternative for formal research and extension?

Joss: PTD in the Kyrgyz Republic

How to structure specialist input into extension-based PTD?

Majzoub: ITDG Participatory development of donkey-drawn plough in North Darfur, Sudan

Village organizations sustainably involved in PTD?

Moyo: Facilitating development of competencies in learning-process, Zimbabwe

Can longer term training and coaching approach be institutionalised?  

Naidu: AME Sustainable Dryland Agriculture, South India

PTD Platforms; scaling-up only PTD results; PTD and globalisation?

Opondo: African Highlands Initiative Monitoring the outcomes of participatory research in NRM

Output monitoring effective to reach attitudinal change?

Perera: Sustainable development in Mahaweli s