“…In contrast, the farmer participatory movement and many NGO rural development projects during the 1980s and 1990s (Marsden and Oakley, 1990;Marsden, 1994;Chambers, 1995;Oakley, 1998) are now focusing speci®cally on the question of involving farmers and other key stakeholders more fully in the PME process (Gass et al, 1997;Grimble and Wellard, 1997;Mellis, et al, 1997;Skinner, 1994). In contrast with`instrumental technocratic approaches' (Marsden and Oakley, 1990, p. 139) these`interpretative approaches' accept and embrace the political nature and subjectivity of evaluations.…”