Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on acronyms and currency
- 1 Concern for land
- 2 Land resource issues
- 3 Resource survey and land evaluation
- 4 Competition for land
- 5 Working with farmers
- 6 Land use planning
- 7 Land degradation
- 8 Global issues: climatic change and biodiversity
- 9 Monitoring change: land resource indicators
- 10 Costing the earth: the economic value of land resources
- 11 Land management: caring for resources
- 12 Research and technology
- 13 Land, food, and people
- 14 Population, poverty, and conflict
- 15 Awareness, attitudes, and action
- Notes
- References
- Index
5 - Working with farmers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on acronyms and currency
- 1 Concern for land
- 2 Land resource issues
- 3 Resource survey and land evaluation
- 4 Competition for land
- 5 Working with farmers
- 6 Land use planning
- 7 Land degradation
- 8 Global issues: climatic change and biodiversity
- 9 Monitoring change: land resource indicators
- 10 Costing the earth: the economic value of land resources
- 11 Land management: caring for resources
- 12 Research and technology
- 13 Land, food, and people
- 14 Population, poverty, and conflict
- 15 Awareness, attitudes, and action
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Only recently has a fundamental fact been realized in development planning: that whatever may be achieved by development projects, ultimately it is people who manage land resources: farmers, other land users, and local communities. Farm systems research was only a stage along the route to this realization. A true participatory approach is based on the sharing of knowledge and views between advisers and farmers, linking scientific advances with the store of local knowledge. Participatory projects by non-governmental organizations have achieved striking local successes, particularly in the area of soil conservation. But this approach can never be scaled up to reach the rural community at large until it is implemented by countries themselves, either through national advisory services or, if these fail, through self-help by farming communities.
If there is a single theme which runs through the success, or otherwise, of projects in natural resource management, it would be ‘people matter’. This goes without saying in developed countries, where farmers and residents' associations are organized into strong lobbies, and will respond to any proposals for change. Continuing co-operation with local land users, from the first conception of a project to its implementation, is as important or more so in the typical situation of developing countries, in which land users are more numerous but less powerfully organized.
There is a set of approaches which have in common the interaction between farmers and developers – more precisely, between the local land users on the one hand, and the scientists, planners, developers, or other non-local people on the other.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Land ResourcesNow and for the Future, pp. 72 - 82Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998