Institutional and professional obstacles to a more effective research process for smallholder agriculture

This paper evidences the experience and capability of the social sciences t o understand human processes. It identifies both the applied research parad igm, which conventionally seeks the technically ideal management for a comm odity in an agroecosystem, and the organisation of applied research institu tions, where allegiance to commodity and discipline drive the culture, as t he main causes of the low adoption of research results by small farmers in developing countries. It suggests the applied research paradigm be extended to understand both the plasticity of the main components in commodity mana gement and the variations in commodity performance expected from climatic v ariations across seasons. It further suggests locally deployed farming syst ems research teams using participatory techniques, with allegiance to the i ntended beneficiaries, as an effective interface to improve both the releva nce of applied research programmes and the mobilization of their products. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.