Understanding the relations between farmers’ seed demand and research methods: The challenge to do better

Abstract

Although the development of improved seeds has witnessed significant advances over the last decades, the adoption of improved seeds and varieties by smallholder farmers is variable. This suggests that research methods for studying farmers’ seed demand are not yielding information that reflects the real-life decisions and behaviours of farmers in the choice and acquisition of their seeds. We suggest that research methods for analysing farmers’ seed demand shape seed availability. This is supported by the theory of social life of methods. We argue that access to and attractiveness of seed are highly context-specific for a farmer, for example, influenced by his/her social position, the role of the crop or variety in the farming system, the linkage to the market, agro-ecological conditions, and that context is highly variable. We also argue that many of our research methods are weak on capturing real-life context and provide fragmented snapshot-nature understanding and biases of farmers preferences and needs for seeds. We call for more integrated understanding of seed systems as a whole and a more holistic methodological research approach that better captures the variable real-life context of farmers while providing the metrics that are needed by seed actors and policymakers to enable informed decisions.

What’s the Story on Agriculture? Using Narratives to Understand Farming Households’ Aspirations in Meru, Kenya

“…In this way, a desire to undertake a particular farming strategy is not divorced from a consideration of the broader farm system. This finding underscores the need to better understand the way in which the wants of those who farm are shaped by a consideration of the whole farm system (Almekinders et al 2019) and points to a shortcoming in current research which commonly only focuses on farming aspirations in relation to one crop or farming strategy (Flachs 2019;Okello et al 2019). As such, our study highlights how an agricultural related aspiration may well be linked into the perceived possibilities of one crop or strategy, but may also be linked in important ways to the supposed (im)possibilities of another.…”

Rethinking technological change in smallholder agriculture

“…Evidence from the literature suggests that there is a ready appetite for novel approaches that can help development professionals and their organisations to improve the targeting of diverse farmer needs (Almekinders et al, 2019;Verkaart et al, 2019); to redeploy agricultural research efforts towards matching different solutions to diverse situations rather than aspiring to develop generic, widely applicable solutions (Coe et al, 2014); and to appreciate the agency of users in adapting and reconfiguring technologies that are introduced to them (Mausch et al, 2017). Scholars already recognise that the uptake and spread of new technology depends strongly on an alignment of a technological design (i.e.…”

Who is the African Farmer? The Importance of Actor Representations in the Debate About Biotechnology Crops in Africa

“…Recent methodological contributions in Science and Technology Studies may offer a further guidance along these lines, including the suggestions to design such methods as activities of collective meaning making (Macnaghten 2020) and to take develop methods that better capture the variable real-life context of farmers (Almekinders et al 2019). These methodological approaches elicit farmers voices by focusing on technologies as they are encountered in various real-life contexts, thereby allowing for different views (and different farmers) to emerge.…”