SOCIOECONOMIC PITFALLS OF ENHANCING INDIGENOUS CAPABILITIES IN HOUSEHOLD FERMENTATION

Traditional fermentation processes are increasingly attracting the att ention of scientists and policy makers as a vital part of food securit y strategies. New opportunities provided by biotechnology are opening up possibilities to improve or upgrade traditional small-scale process es and make better use of agricultural products. A straightforward tra nsfer-of-technology approach, characteristic for mainstream developmen t assistance to developing countries, is inappropriate to upgrade and improve the traditional food processing sector in developing countries . In this paper the case of soy sauce fermentation in Indonesia is pre sented to illustrate the dangers of narrowing traditional food process ing to a sequence of operations. These processes and their operations reflect the social, political, cultural and ethnical relations in whic h they emerged and evolved. Successful upgrading requires that these r elations are understood and that based on such an understanding, moder n technologies build upon their traditional predecessors. Any technolo gy or project that neglects the coherence between these relations or i s unable to meet social, political and cultural requirements in additi on to technical ones, is doomed to fail. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd .