2-CASI Scaling : A System Approach

Transcript

Namaste, friends. If we want farmers to adopt a particular technology, then even a small mistake can hinder its spread.

There can be many reasons for a technology not spreading. We might be a research and development institute and focus solely on technology but due to lack of proper infrastructure, the technology fails to become popular. It can also be that we are a government institute that provides subsidies or financial support or machinery but because of not following proper protocol, the technology fails to spread. Or we might be a donor who is running a research program, then the agency through which we are working has an important role to play.

So the main reason why any technology is not adopted is because we do not look at it as a system approach. CASI is a system approach and its scaling is a system. The different stakeholders like the farmer, government agencies, research and development institutes, donor, private institutions that manufacture machines and service providers should have communication between each other and they should know what role they play and who can play what work efficiently. It is because of lack of communication between the various stakeholders that the adoption of technology is very slow or it does not take place.

To understand it better, we will now discuss the scaling framework and who are the different stakeholders and how we can improve this whole process.

The adoption process is also affected by the socio-economic condition of the farmer, access to resources, gender and his entitlement to land.

Besides this, the decision making process of a farmer is a very complex process. It is simplistic to think that he will adopt the technology by just looking at the economic perspective. The farmer while deciding which technology to adopt keeps in mind the biophysical condition of his farm, his soil, water availability, rainfall pattern and connectivity.

The nature of technology we are offering and the relative advantage that it offers over the technology that is currently in use also plays an important role in a technology adoption. The value offer of this new technology should be better than the current technology in use like it should increase yield or it should lower cost of cultivation.

Next, we also have to consider the scalability and the things that are required for the successful diffusion of a technology. An example can be the lack of infrastructure like in every village there should be at least one machine. But with just one machine, the technology can be adopted only within a limited area. So the adoption process might get halted by the lack of infrastructure.

Now looking at the entire process of diffusion of a technology in a systems perspective, we have to look at the role of different stakeholders. The research and development institute can improve their prototype, capacity development of stakeholders can be improved, the government needs to develop the  infrastructure, the donors should support research programs and the private institutions need to provide quality machines and inputs.

All this depends on two factors. The first is how we can make this process effective with least resources. The second is that we have to see what is the right role for whom and according to that we will have to strengthen the convergence process. Once we have created the system then we would have to institutionalize or formalize it and then it would become stable. We require political and government support to achieve this. So CASI is an agriculture innovation system and the role of place, people and portfolio are very important.

Now, we look at the challenges in the scaling of CASI. In the first week we looked at some practical issues. Now, we will look at other issues. First, many times we do not understand the system and because of that our scaling process goes slow. We have to work in the farming system perspective and identify people’s problems and their local situation. We have to work together with the people and move forward the participatory technology development process or demonstrations. The third is technological challenges like because of not having proper protocol we do not get germination or there is a lot of weed infestation or many times there is crop failure as a result of which the trust of farmer breaks and it becomes very difficult.

In conservation agriculture there is also the problem that we do not at times see the results immediately. For example, we say that conservation agriculture will improve our soil health. But for that we have to do crop residue retention for a long time and then we can see the improvement in soil health. So at times a long term perspective can come up as a challenge.

We have to develop convergence and trust between different stakeholders. Many times due to lack of trust, the stakeholders work in different directions and this slows our adoption and scaling process.

Recently, the burning of crop residue has come out to be a major problem. Farmers burn the crop residue in the farm itself as the window from the harvest and sowing of the next crop is very small.

Additionally, there is also the problem of using crop residue as fuel and fodder. So if we are advising farmers to do more and more crop residue retention then we have to understand that crop residue is a valuable product for farmers and they use it as a fodder for their livestock. So we will have to make a balance between all of these things

Government institutions and political leaders also have a role to play in the scaling process. It is very important that they also have some knowledge of the technology.

In the end, we have to do capacity development of all the stakeholder be it the research and development people, scientist, farmers, service providers or anyone associated with the manufacture of machines. Only then will our system be able to run smoothly. This also can be a major reason why technology is not adopted.

So friends, we have to look at adoption as an overall systems perspective. The moment we see it as an isolated sub system like technology, capacity development or knowledge dissemination then our scaling process does not take place as we want.

So our suggestion is that this is a system and we should look at it from a system perspective.