Do farmer-participatory methods apply more to high potential areas than tomarginal ones?

Farmers had not adopted new technologies in complex diverse and risk-prone (CDR) agricultural environments. Farmer-participatory research was develope d as an alternative to the top-down, transfer of technology approach to agr icultural research and extension that had demonstrably failed in marginal a reas. However, in more favoured ones, there is also, at best, a significant lag in the adoption of modern technologies and, at worst, the adoption of modern technologies is incomplete. Varieties with wide adaptation are grown in high potential production systems (HPPSs) but this is not a unique prop erty of such systems, because widely adapted varieties are also found in ma rginal areas. Hence the type of variety grown in high potential and margina l environments does not justifydifferent degrees of farmer participation. T he 'transfer of technology' extension methods employed in HPPSs use fewer r esources than participatory ones developed for marginal areas, but particip atory methods can be adapted for HPPSs and made cost-effective. Ongoing res earch in HPPSs in Nepal and India has shown that production increases when farmers adopt new varieties identified in participatory research. If partic ipatory approaches were widely applied in these systems, they would contrib ute greatly to the food security of the developing world with its rapidly g rowing population.