Enhancing the impact and sustainability of development strategies with smallholder farmers: participatory engagement, whole farm modelling and farmer-led on-farm research

ABSTRACT

Thousands of agricultural research for development projects around the world aimed at assisting smallholder farm households secure a better livelihood have not achieved sustained integration of new technologies into local farming systems or beyond the immediate communities in which they were sited. This paper describes an integrated systems approach, which has been applied successfully in several countries, incorporating: (1) benchmarking (or defining) a current system; (2) application of whole-farm systems modelling of potential intervention strategies; (3) on-ground testing by smallholders, and adaptation where necessary, and; (4) assuming success, using these participant smallholders to transfer the knowledge to other smallholders, both locally and regionally, and integrate the technology into the local farming systems in a sustainable manner.

KEYWORDS:

• Farming systems
• sustainability
• impact
• whole farm modelling
• integration
• scale out

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support and input of many Indonesian colleagues including Dr Tanda Panjaitan, Lalu Wirajaswadi, Dr Ketut Puspadi and Lia Hadiawati from BPTP Lombok (BPTP – Balai Pengkajian Teknologi Pertanian, the institute for agricultural technology), Rachmat Rachman and Syamsu Bahar from BPTP Makassar, Dr Rusnadi Padjung and Dr Asmuddin Natsir from Hassanuddin University, Makassar, and Professors Dahlanuddin and Yusuf Sutaryono from the University of Mataram, as well as colleagues in CSIRO, in particular Drs A. Ash and B.C. Pengelly, and Ms M. van Wensveen. Helpful and constructive comments on an initial manuscript were provided by L. Williams and Dr B.C. Pengelly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Cam McDonald and Jeff Corfield are pasture agronomists specialising in beef production, Neil MacLeod is an agricultural economist and Shaun Lisson is a crop specialist. All were members of the former CSIRO Division of Ecosystem Sciences and have extensive experience in small holder development in south-east Asia and southern Africa.

ORCID

Cam McDonald http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2265-2299

Additional information

Funding

The work reported in this paper was funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) [grant number AS2/2004/005].