Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
background from the old to the young generation. Besides that mechanically shelled maize
could not be sacrificed, the chief was also worried that an efficient way of maize shelling would
reduce the time available to educate the younger generation in the culture of the community.
These processes should not be underestimated. A participatory approach gives more room for
the participants to include these cultural aspects into the development process than a top-
down extension approach. However, it may take time. In a community in the Builsa district in
Northern Ghana, it took two farming seasons before the local leaders accepted composting as
a promising method to improve soil fertility. The traditional leaders consulted their ancestors
and because, as they said, 'composting will provide more good food to the ancestors', they
accepted and promoted this new technology. In another community, the people strongly
believed that burning the fields around their compounds was needed to, as they described it,
'prevent the chief from dying'. It took village members and development workers two years of
talking to convince the traditional leaders to implement an experiment. The compromise was
that instead of putting the whole community farm to fire, only a few fields should be burned.
After the blessings of the ancestors they implemented the experiment. The chief did not die
and the yields on the compound farms increased and the whole community was happy.
These experiences show that organic farming is more than just a way of farming. Organic
farming is an example of sustainable development owned and organised by farmers them-
selves. Organic farming deals with a development in which all technical, social and cultural
aspects of life are considered. To start this development, assistance from development organi-
sations is needed. These organisations should have a participatory approach and the attitude
that sustainable development should start from local resources and techniques, local knowl-
edge and local attitudes and traditions.
The challenge: 'stop soul erosion'
The challenge for organic development organisations and rural people is to convince more
development organisations, and especially governments and large donor-organisations, to
experiment with organic farming in combination with participatory extension techniques.
The present trend to use biotechnology and to use top-down extension methods to introduce
genetically modified crops such as cotton, soybeans and maize should be highly questioned.
The potentials of organic techniques and bottom-up development processes have been under-
estimated and deserve far more consideration.
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