Ecological Literacy - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 156

The dilemma for authorities is that they both need and fear people's
participation. They need people's agreement and support, but they fear
that wider and open-ended involvement is less controllable. However, if
this fear permits only stage-managed forms of participation, then distrust
and greater alienation are the most likely outcomes. Participation can mean
finding something out and proceeding as originally planned. Alternatively,
it can mean developing processes of collective learning that change the
way in which people think and act. The many ways in which organizations
interpret and use the term participation range from passive participation,
where people are told what is to happen and act out predetermined roles,
to self-mobilization, where people take initiatives independently of
external institutions. 21
Agricultural development often starts with the notion that there are
technologies that work, and so it is just a matter of inducing or persuading
farmers to adopt them. But the problem is that the imposed models look
good at first, and then fade away. Alley cropping, an agroforestry system
comprising rows of nitrogen-fixing trees or bushes separated by rows of
cereals, has long been the focus of research. Many productive and
sustainable systems that need few or no external inputs have been devel-
oped. They stop erosion, produce food and wood, and can be cropped
over long periods. But the problem is that very few farmers have adopted
these systems as designed - they appear to have been produced largely for
research stations, with their plentiful supplies of labour and resources, and
standardized soil conditions. 22
It is critical that sustainable agriculture and conservation management
do not prescribe concretely defined sets of technologies and practices. This
only serves to restrict the future options of farmers and rural people. As
conditions change and as knowledge changes, so must the capacity of
farmers and communities enable them to change and adapt, too. Agri-
cultural sustainability should not imply simple models or packages that
are imposed upon individuals. Rather, sustainability should be seen as a
process of social learning. This centres upon building the capacity of
farmers and their communities to learn about the complex ecological and
biophysical complexity in their fields and farms, and then to act on this
information. The process of learning, if it is socially embedded and jointly
engaged upon, provokes changes in behaviour and can bring forth a new
world. 23
We could think of nature and farm fields as being full of megabytes of
information, thereby ensuring a focus on developing the proper operating
systems for a new sustainability science. Genetics, pest-predator relation-
ships, moisture and plants, soil health, and the chemical and physical
relationships between plants and animals are subject to manipulation, and