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To achieve network objectives (see 22) it is necessary to understand
existing institutional structures under which decisions are taken.
Without this any new technologies potentially suitable for benefiting
the farmer may just increase the stock of available, but unadopted,
practices.
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Decisions taken at four institutional levels appear to be relevant
for the generation of new technologies: farmers' households, the rural
communities where farms operate, government organizations, and external
agencies for technical and financial assistance. It is these systems
which establish priorities, create incentives and identify constraints
and opportunities.
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Network effectiveness will be greatly influenced by the ability of
such networks to build structures and design procedures to make
decisions compatible among the four institutional levels on the
"vertical" axes of social systems, as well as to further strong
"horizontal" interactions between structures in the region as a whole.
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Government research organizations from the agricultural and forestry
sectors, in cooperation with those responsible for extension,
development and training, should be the conveners to achieve such a
vertical compatibility, given that it is their function to interpret
national policies and to promulgate the corresponding land use
strategies. They should also become the centre of technology-generating
activities, and the hub of regional networking.
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The multidisciplinary nature of agroforestry poses a special
institutional problem of creating viable and dynamic operational
structures to integrate research and development institutions from the
agriculture and forestry sectors. Given existing institutional
organization and roles, such structures should in most cases be based
upon the principle of integrated project planning but independent
implementation of assigned responsibilities. These could, in principle,
be distributed according to the predominant use of the land where the
problem to be addressed has been identified, i.e., agricultural or
forest land.
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It is on the training of national cadres that most of the
institution-building efforts should be concentrated. Given the
state-of-the-art in agroforestry training, it seems that emphasis should
be placed on medium-term training vis-a-vis formal post-graduate
studies. Two principles ought to guide activities in this field: that of
alternate and sequential training opportunities, and that of using
technology-generating projects as the main training grounds.
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Sequential training means that research officers in the agroforestry
field should be given the opportunity to gradually move from courses on
methods to assess the potential of agroforestry in a given situation to
on-the-job training for improving research knowledge and skills. They
could then be crowned by graduate studies in a discipline relevant to
the agroforestry systems the trainee is working on, or in the planning
and management of land-use, research. All these training opportunities
should alternate with normal duties assigned to the trainee by his/her
national institution.
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Project activities should be systematically co-ordinated with
training of national personnel, so as to ensure meaningful manpower
development.
