Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The villages were densely populated. Based on the numbers presented in
Table 2.2, the population density ranged between 600 and 1,030 persons per square
kilometer. However, because the villages were selected in a purposive process, this
may not be reflective of the density of the entire Kiambu agroecosystem. It is, how-
ever, likely to be the case in those areas where smallholders were predominant. The
high proportion of female-managed households reflects the tradition of men seeking
off-farm employment in the urban areas and rural-based industries while women
remain in the home and manage the farms.
2.4.3
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A
g r o e C o s y s t e m
h
e A l t h
A
p p r o A C h
This work demonstrates that a holistic approach to investigating AESH and beginning
to implement sustainable processes for AESH improvement is feasible even in com-
plex field situations. More important, however, is that communities were able to use
the concept of health to discuss and model approaches to improve their livelihoods.
The approach provided a simple, yet highly specialized, language—understood by
the communities, researchers, extension agents, development agents, and policymak-
ers—for discussing issues relating the health and sustainability of agroecosystems
and for structuring the process through which remedial actions can be taken.
A unique feature in this process was that community, researchers, and develop-
ment agents played complementary roles. Using Biggs's (1989) framework, which
described the relationship between researchers and communities in terms of the
extent to which local opinion and practice is given recognition, this process would
fall into the category referred to as collegial. The community's role was crucial in
understanding the system and posing the key questions of interest. Through partici-
patory problem analysis and action planning, the community's informal research-
and-development system was actively encouraged.
Researchers and resource persons played an important role of facilitating
the implementation of the action plans (e.g., offering technical advice, providing
research activities to answer key community questions, facilitating contacts with
outside agencies, writing proposals to investors, and providing leadership training),
but the leading role was left to the communities. Research questions of broader inter-
est, such as social analysis of communities, indicator development and application,
and determinants of sustainability were investigated with community input and
collaboration in both the design and analysis. The main output from the interaction
between the two (communities and researchers) was a synergy that augmented both
the communities' and the researchers' ability to first detect and then investigate and
act on AESH concerns.
The main difficulties in the approach relate to its time horizon, broad perspec-
tive, and location specificity. As the process is open-ended, only its initiation and
early development fit into a standard project time frame. Longer-term issues, such
as assessing sustainability, require longer-term mechanisms of support. The holistic
view adopted in this process, while essential to establishing the crucial context for
decisions, means that sometimes there was a lack of decision-making focus. Last,
from a research perspective, it is not yet clear how generalizable the lessons learned
are. In our view, the process is potentially transferable, but this requires further
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