Overseas

Development
The Implementation
Institute of Agricultural
Development Policies:
Organisation,
Management and
Institutions
Summary and Comment orj-the Second
International Seminar grKtJhan^e in
Agriculture, at the University of Reading
September 9 V&'\ 974 ' \
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Price: 50p
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The Implementation Overseas Development Institute

of Agricultural
Development Policies:
Organisation,
Management and
Institutions

Summary and Comment on the Second

International Seminar on Change in
Agriculture, at the University of Reading
September 9 19, 1974

STAfl

Guy Hunter

Overseas Development Institute Ltd.

London
 © Copyright
Overseas Development Institute Ltd.
1974

The Overseas Development Institute is responsible for determining that this

work should be presented to the public, but neither the University of Reading
nor individual members of the ODI Council are responsible for statements of
fact and expression of opinion contained herein.
Contents
Page
Introduction: The General Problem ... ... ... ... 1

I Politics ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 2

The Papers ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 2
Discussion ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 2

II Technical and Environmental Factors ... ... ... 6

The Papers ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 7
Discussion ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 9

III Farmer Organisation and Delivery of Services ... ... 12

The Papers ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 12
Discussion ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 14

IV The Commercial Function ... ... ... ... ... 18

The open market ... ... ... ... ... ... 18
Government/marketing board operations ... ... 20
Co-operative methods ... ... ... ... ... 20
Integrated single crop management ... ... ... 21
Financing inputs and farm investment ... ... ... 22
Supply and storage ... ... ... ... ... ... 23

V Administration ... ... ... ... ... ... 25

The central level ... ... ... ... ... ... 25
The local level ... ... ... ... ... ... 26
Time and place ... ... ... ... ... ... 27
Larger political/administrative perspectives ... ... 27
Implications ... ... ... ... ... ... 29

VI Conclusion ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 30

The general field subsistence and market ... ... 30
The state of the art ... ... ... ... ... ... 32
Continued work ... ... ... ... ... ... 35
Addresses ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 36

List of Papers ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 37

iii
Foreword
The Second International Seminar on Change in Agriculture, jointly
organised by Reading University and the Overseas Development
Institute (London), and sponsored also by the World Bank, was
directed to the study of the field implementation of agricultural and
rural development policies in less developed countries.
The material used in the Seminar included research work generated
by the Reading/ODI Joint Research Programme, a large number of
contributed Papers, and a number of Plenary Addresses spaced
throughout the ten days of work. 225 members from 50 countries
attended.
It will take some time before the Papers and proceedings can be
published, even in abridged form.1 It therefore seemed desirable that
some summary of the major issues discussed, and of what appeared
to be the general movement of opinion among the membership,
should be prepared quickly, not only for the use of members but also
for those unable to attend.
This Summary is designed to meet that need, in the clear under-
standing that it cannot be comprehensive, or even reflect fully the
diverse ways in which the membership would have placed their chief
emphasis. A large number of excellent detailed suggestions have inevit-
ably been squeezed out, although I hope that members will see traces
of them at many points. It is a personal impression of the main drift
and significance of the Seminar. Although it is therefore subjective and
incomplete, I hope that it may prove useful.
I would like to acknowledge the assistance given by Professor
A. H. Bunting, Anthony Bottrall and Robert Wood in checking and
improving this Summary and Comment.

Guy Hunter
Director, Reading University-Overseas Development Institute Joint
Research Programme on Agricultural Development Overseas.

A full list of the Papers and Addresses is given in the Appendix. Individual
copies can be obtained from Professor A. H. Bunting, Plant Science Labora-
tories, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 2AS.

Price: 50p
Introduction: The General Problem
It would at least be generally agreed that the central problem which
confronted members was not simply how to increase total agricultural
output in developing countries an important aim in itself in the light
of world food and population prospects but also how to ensure that
a far larger proportion of small farmers and of the rural poor should
share both in the increase of output and in the gains in income and
well-being generated by higher productivity. And, indeed, it is unlikely
that even the needed increases in output alone could be achieved with-
out drawing upon the potential of this small-scale sector which repre-
sents, in most developing countries, the great bulk of manpower and
farming experience, even if it does not often account for the biggest
percentage of agricultural and pastoral output.
This problem of stimulating small-scale production involves 1) polit-
ical, 2) technical, 3) social, 4) commercial and 5) administrative issues
of quite formidable dimensions; and it was to these issues that the
Seminar discussions were directed. Although these problems are
intimately inter-related (being only abstractions from total situations),
it may be useful to treat them separately, under the above headings,
which in fact follow the order in which the Seminar programme was
arranged.
I Politics
It would have been futile to exclude political factors from the concerns
of this Seminar: every member was fully aware of them. It would have
been equally futile to discuss the virtues of rival political attitudes and
their embodiment in economic and social situations. The Seminar was
asked to consider the effects of the overall political philosophies and
aims of governments on the actual organisation and implementation of
rural development. If, for example, it is decided that private traders
shall not be allowed to buy some major agricultural products, then
alternative, public-sector or co-operative systems must take their place.
How efficient are such systems, in comparison with private trade; how
is 'efficiency' defined in this connection; what problems beset such
state-inspired systems? If, per contra, private trade is encouraged,
what social or economic dangers may arise, and by what means can
government control or guard against abuses?

The Papers
The Seminar had before it a major Paper by Sir Arthur Gaitskell, con-
sidering the choices of implementation methods which might be
adopted for agricultural development deriving from the huge Mekong
Valley irrigation schemes; mainly descriptive Papers from Egypt (El
Kammash) and Yugoslavia (Professor Stand) on the problems and
policies in each country; a Paper by Professor Schran on the develop-
ment of rural organisation in mainland China; a Paper by Dr. K.
Mathur indicating the political and administrative difficulties in ensur-
ing that the benefits of the Green Revolution in India should reach the
small farmer group; a survey by Professor Barraclough on political
motivation and its effects on the co-operative movement in five Latin
American countries; and a more general Paper by Dr. Werner Klatt on
the needs for land reform in Asia.

Discussion
It was widely felt that the level of discussion in groups on this subject
was not satisfactory, for three main reasons. First, it was difficult to
handle as the first topic, when members were strange to each other;
second, the objective of the group discussion was not sufficiently clear
or understood; and, third, there were not enough members from cen-
trally planned or fully socialist countries to contribute vital detail to
the debate. Nor did the Plenary Address by M. Paul-Marc Henry,
though brilliantly delivered, provide the Seminar with a tool of analysis
which members found easy to apply to the subject.
 POLITICS

In fact, some of the most important and concrete political issues

came up in later sessions in pragmatic discussion of three difficult pro-
blems. The first is related to research and technology. It is by now a
commonplace social/political judgment that major advances in technol-
ogy have normally tended to favour those members of society who are
best placed to exploit the new opportunities which are offered
ie those with most economic resources, greater ability to bear risk,
better education and better access to power-centres and government
services. Unless specific efforts are made to counteract this tendency,
there will be a widening of social and economic inequality. This topic
will arise again under the technical and research heading.
Second, and closely related to the first, it is widely agreed that the
actual distribution of assets (and, in this case, particularly of land)
will give much greater absolute rewards from new productivity to the
larger holders than to the smaller: here again some countervailing
force is needed to reduce economic inequality, assuming that to be a
political goal. This issue was dealt with in some degree by Professor
Mellor's Paper (under Section II) and by Professor Johnston's Plenary
Address (Section IV), both of which spelt out, from slightly different
approaches, the greater gains to the total economy to be expected from
a technical and administrative approach which specifically aimed at
inclusion of the smaller holdings in productivity gains. But this does
not cover the whole problem; and the need for a range of measures of
agrarian reform, particularly in some regions, recurred constantly in
the group discussions.
Third, a question of political values arose in relation to the various
types of 'grouping' by which farmers could organise themselves both
to increase their dynamic capacity and to provide the administration
with a means of delivering services, not to millions of farmers individ-
ually, but to a far smaller number of organised groups. In situations
where villages have been dominated by a few 'magnates', the establish-
ment of elected Committees, Panchayats etc is likely to result in the
capture of such institutions by these magnates, thus increasing rather
than reducing their dominance. Two difficult sociological and political
problems arise here. First, is it possible to avoid this effect by varying
the methods by which groups are formed eg by stimulating the
growth of much smaller groups of farmers concerned with a particular
need or facility (a tube-well or a store for example) so that such
groups, self-selected by a common interest, do not reflect within the
group the social structure of the community as a whole? This was an
issue raised by Shri B. Sivaraman in his Plenary Address. Second, the
question of leadership arises: how far is it possible to bypass the
existing ('natural'?) leadership of a closely-knit society in an endeav-
our to create new opportunities and new elements of leadership from
below?
IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

A major point of theory and practice is raised here. Sweeping ideo-

logical generalisations tend to give the impression that all magnates are
oppressive or that all merchants are exploiters not necessarily from
deliberate wickedness but because their position in a total system
determines their behaviour. In detailed practice this is not by any
means always the case: some of the most successful and best-managed
co-operatives, for example, have been initiated by men in leadership
positions who have brought gains, not merely to themselves, but to the
whole farming community, including small farmers. Thus there may
be more 'give' in many systems than the rigidity of such generalisations
suggests.
Nevertheless, although there may be some room for manoeuvre and
reform in almost all systems, the gap between those who believe that
only a total restructuring of society can bring substantial social equity,
and those who are prepared to take advantage of any opening in that
direction, remains largely unbridged. The issue was not faced head-on
by the Seminar, since its agenda concerned organisations and institu-
tions for implementing policy; and, even after revolutions, such organ-
isation (eg the timely delivery and financing of inputs, and collection of
surpluses) is still needed.
The Seminar came nearest to this issue when, in the final report
summarising discussions on extension and farmer groupings, an impres-
sion was given, perhaps from Latin American experience, that without
major restructuring of the whole society, efforts at extension, 'anima-
tion' and organisation of smaller farmers were doomed to fail, or at
least to amount only to 'tinkering'. There was quite vigorous reaction
to this among some members. For 'total restructuring' is not a tool of
action which can be picked off the shelf at will: and executives of
developing country governments, technical and research staff, consult-
ants and technical assistants, and donor agencies, live in a world in
which they have to do their best in taking action from month to month
and year to year within whatever political context they find themselves.
While a revolution (eg in Ethiopia) may open new positive possibil-
ities, 'tinkering' is not to be dismissed; some of the most striking agri-
cultural advances (the Kenya Tea Development Authority, the Kili-
manjaro Native Co-operative Union, the Federal Land Development
Authority in Malaysia, land consolidation in Africa and India, and
many more successes) have been achieved within existing political
structures. This may be because governments are seldom monolithic
in their attitudes to change. It may be that successful 'tinkering' in fact
only shows up the need for even more radical change; and indeed, by
doing so, helps to concentrate attention on further problems. This
could reasonably be said of the Green Revolution itself. Further, 'total
restructuring' has large and unavoidable social costs (whatever its bene-
fits) and leaves lasting scars. Some would argue that it is a cardinal
 POLITICS

virtue of a political system to be able to adjust constantly to changing

pressures and thus avoid the heavier costs of recurring total break-
down and fresh starts.
It can be said that at least the will to 'tinker' more effectively, and
to tinker in the direction of greater equity and opportunity for small
farmers to share in the potential gains which science can offer was
strong throughout the whole Seminar, as the suggestions under sub-
sequent subject-headings will clearly show.
II Technical and Environmental Factors
The actual choice of what crops to grow or what animals to rear is
dependent on a large number of factors, which include the physical
environment (soil, water-supply, temperature, elevation, etc) the tech-
nology available for various purposes (tools, power, seed, fertilisation,
irrigation, storage, fencing), the size and tenure of holdings, economic
determinants, location (proximity to town, road, etc); and social deter-
minants (what is allowed by society, the form and availability of
labour supply, etc). The pressures of these factors, acting simultan-
eously, produce 'a farming or pastoral system' in a given place at a
given time: and substantial changes in any of them (irrigation, prices,
mechanised power) may sharply alter the system. The particular com-
binations of these factors operating at given tunes and places are
highly individual and specific: it is obviously not possible to make
generalisations about what specific local programmes should be.
The Seminar was therefore not called upon to discuss these factors
hi themselves, but a much simpler question how far do the farming
systems resulting from these factors give a guide to the type of organ-
isation, administration, management or institutions which can most
effectively be applied, in a given case, for support and improvement?
It is clear that traditional systems, over long periods of time, and
with few changes in the determining factors, found their own answer
to this question. If certain factors required the efforts of a whole com-
munity or lineage, then a tradition of community effort for that work
was built up; in nomadic or transhumant pastoral societies, the collec-
tive arrangements for movement and for grazing rights were worked
out to ensure survival; in systems where the use of a river or well was
critical, institutional arrangements for access and use were invented
and observed by the community itself. Such arrangements were aimed
usually at survival rather than at rapid improvement of output and at
optimising the results obtainable for the whole society concerned,
within the possibly very limited range of available technology and
means of managing the environment. In consequence such farming
systems, unsupported by modern scientific knowledge but also based
on a very detailed and often profound pragmatic knowledge of local
conditions, seem, by modern standards, to be systems of high persist-
ence but very low productivity. But, taking one decade with another,
they were viable and matched by appropriate institutions. A govern-
ment anxious to increase productivity has to find not only an accept-
able way of introducing technological variants into the farming system
and of releasing constraints by investment, but also the type of institu-
tion which may be acceptable and suited to the new, more productive
combination of factors.
 TECHNICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

To give one or two examples it seems reasonable to suppose that

the organisation needed to introduce innovations and to service and
sustain them in a densely populated area of small holdings will be
different from that needed to improve and sustain productivity in a
sparsely populated pastoral area. Major canal irrigation systems may
need different disciplines and groupings from systems relying on tube-
wells serving small acreages. Systems involving high uniformity and
regularity of output and exacting cultivation and husbandry methods
(horticulture, modern palm-oil production) will require different organ-
isation and supervision from that needed for production of standard
cereal crops. Thus one criterion for the choice of administrative and
institutional tools of development lies in the actual nature of the exist-
ing and the proposed farming system, which, in turn, is a result, and
a useful epitome, of the multiple physical, technological and social
factors already mentioned.

The Papers
A number of the Papers written for the Seminar illustrated this issue
in relation to different farming systems. The three general Papers on
pastoral and nomadic systems (R. Baker, M. E. Adams, H. E. Jahnke
with H. Ruthenberg) pointed out, in very similar ways, the dangers of
'developmental' action applied to these systems without a full under-
standing of the ecological and social conditions within which they had
been traditionally developed. Thus, better control of disease in cattle,
and provision of extra water holes, without control of stock numbers
and movement, led first to larger herds, adding to pressure on the
environment, then to gross over-grazing and erosion round the water-
points, and finally to an even worse catastrophe when the years of
severe drought came. Each Paper pointed out that unrestricted private
ownership of herds, competing for a limited common resource of graz-
ing and water, makes both range management and environmental con-
trol impossible. Various alternative methods of control and manage-
ment were suggested by the authors involving either governmental or
co-operative management of large areas, to include sufficient offtake
from herds to prevent overstocking and also strategic control of graz-
ing movements.
A Paper from Botswana (B. Thompson and G. Hunter) reinforced
a point made by Adams, that modern commercialised development
schemes tend to destroy traditional systems through which the smaller
cattle owners could share in herd management and to some extent in
the food available to the group as a whole. The more commercial and
individualised such schemes become, the greater the danger that tradi-
tional provision for the poor will be excluded. Further, land pressure
at the margins of the cultivable area may result in occupation of this
IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

area by settled farmers, thus depriving the nomadic or transhumant

groups of a resource which is absolutely necessary to their system. If,
in consequence, the system fails, the seasonal resources of the outer,
semi-desert, area will not be used at all, at a time when all resources
are precious.
A fifth Paper, by N. S. Jodha, which gave a case-study from Rajast-
han, showed how carefully a new enterprise (sheep rearing) had to be
fitted into both the local ecological and 'traditional' farm-management
systems of the area.
All in all, the Papers seemed to hint at a very carefully constructed
common management for the larger range systems, giving the utmost
possible scope for retaining traditional communal features where they
still have a social and economic role; limited expectations of either
high returns on capital or substantial increase in direct employment;
and, as Baker put it, a holistic approach to both environment and
traditional social arrangements that is to say, one which included
ecological and social as well as commercial objectives. These require-
ments imply a considerable element of government planning and
supervision.
Turning now to irrigated systems, Dr. Thornton's Paper gave a most
useful review of the various types of organisation which have been
used for the management of irrigation systems; and this Paper was
complemented by a short but stimulating account of self-organised
small irrigation systems in northern Thailand (J. B. Downs and
N. Mountstephens) and of the spontaneous development of very
simple technology (the sampan motor used as a low-lift pump) in
South Vietnam (J. F. Cunningham).
Only two other detailed types of farming system were dealt with in
the Papers the combination of forestry and agriculture, 'agri-silvi-
culture', (Professor Roche) and the very widespread system of (mainly
rain-fed) agriculture in the huge dryland-farming systems of northern
Nigeria (Dr. D. W. Norman). This latter Paper was notable for its
rigorous examination of the relation between the farming system itself,
with its labour constraints, the capacity of the system to make room
for new crops and technology, and the administrative capacity of
government to introduce and service new technology and farm-man-
agement systems.
The attempt to spread higher productivity, employment and income
to the lower levels of the farming community was analysed by two
main Papers. The first, by Professor Mellor, discussed the social and
economic implications of government policies in terms of the type of
technology used and of price policy for staple crops, pointing to the
delicate balance between rewarding prices to cereal growers (benefit-
ing farmers but putting up costs of living to labourers, except farm
labourers paid in kind) and lower prices (benefiting labourers, both

8
 TECHNICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

rural and urban, but restricting incentives to farmers). From a different

point of view, Dr. J. W. Thomas's Paper on rural works pinpointed
the relative gains in employment, incomes or infrastructural investment
by various types of rural works schemes, with various types of aim
and of organisational methods.
It is obvious that two variables which are under human control (the
technology applied and the controlling/servicing organisation) can
have profound effects both on farming systems and on the distribution
of gains. It was, therefore, very necessary to look at the output and
application of agricultural research, from which the technology
actually available to farmers ultimately springs. This was covered in a
Paper by Dr. B. Okigbo, who emphasised that research, from the
earliest stage of its design, should be far more closely linked to the
farming systems into which it would be introduced. Thus, research
based on maximising yield in monocultural conditions may be very
hard to fit into a traditional system (such as that of Eastern Nigeria)
in which multiple cropping, both simultaneous and serial, has been the
response, based on long experience, to local conditions and food
requirements.

Discussion
This was a formidable agenda for discussion. Although both the Papers
and the discussions in groups tended to underline strongly that various
types of farming systems, resulting from environmental, technical and
social/economic pressures, require different organisational and admin-
istrative support and control, it would have been quite impossible, in
the time, to suggest a whole set of typologies matched to a correspond-
ing set of organisational requirements. Indeed, since whole situations
and the resulting whole farming systems are, even under a broad
classification, much more numerous than the range of organisational
and institutional tools, it is clear that only certain key elements in the
various situations could be used as criteria for organisational choices.
For example, certain systems (eg pastoral, irrigation) imply a key
element of control; some require a high quality of technical service;
some, with less technical demand, require the sensitive stimulation and
support of self-organised groups. It was therefore easier to approach
such a subject from the opposite end ie by analysis of the actual
range of organisational tools available, and their virtues and defects
for handling particular types of situation. This was done largely in the
discussions of Sections III, IV and V of the Seminar.
Many members were particularly interested in the design and organ-
isation of research, as the means of advancing the knowledge base for
development. The main issues were set out in Dr. Okigbo's paper and
in the Address devoted to this topic by Professor Bunting at the clos-
IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

ing session of the Seminar. The discussions, as reported, emphasised

that research is often insufficiently relevant to field problems, and that
the social and economic as well as technical constraints must be taken
into account if the results are to be effective in real situations. How is
this to be achieved, and even institutionalised? Some stress was laid
on a better flow of information from and about farmers themselves to
the research staff, and also on more exposure of research staff to
actual field conditions before the research design is crystallised. This
would naturally apply to research with a 'farming system' emphasis:
but it is also significantly relevant to research intended to increase the
yields or returns from particular crop or animal enterprises or to
research within disciplines (eg agricultural engineering), since the
results of all research, in the last resort, have to find acceptance in
field conditions, among the farmers and extension workers concerned.
There was considerable support for the idea that staff with economic
or sociological training should join fully, as members, in the work of
technical research teams (and not come in merely as transient and all-
too-often unsympathetic visitors). This would not only improve mutual
understanding, but also help to define the objectives of research and
the types of technology, arising from it, that are most likely to be
accepted by farmers. While agricultural economics is fairly well recog-
nised by natural scientists as a respectable discipline, rural sociology
has not yet been so widely accepted, and there was some banter
between some sections of the membership on this issue. It was further
suggested that applied natural scientists should be so trained that they
understand more fully the social and economic factors which affect
the application of their work.
It was also stressed that, while it is necessary to know the maximum
yield which a given environment can physically sustain, and the ways
in which it can be attained, the practical prescriptions for farmers
have to take account of inputs (such as cash or labour) which do not
come from the natural environment. Prescriptions must therefore
consider economic, operational and social elements also. In the light
of the real situation of huge numbers of small farmers, a crop variety
with maximum yield, which requires substantial inputs, full and regu-
lated water-supply, intensive protection against pests and diseases,
and has to be sown, weeded or harvested at times when the farm com-
munity is hard pressed by the needs of other crops or of non-agricul-
tural activities, may be a much less suitable gift from research than a
variety which can be relied on to give a satisfactory yield under sub-
optimal but more convenient conditions and management. For
example, a variety which can be sown at a time when the farm family
has labour to spare, is a stable composite rather than a hybrid, resists
pests and diseases, and is acceptable in taste and appearance (even if
it contains less lysine), is far more likely to be used by small farmers,
10
 TECHNICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

at least in the early stages of their progress towards greater productiv-

ity and more effective methods, than a 'high-yielding variety' which
has impossible cultural requirements and is not welcomed by the con-
sumer.
There is still a long way to go before both the staff and the govern-
ing bodies of research centres (national and international) understand
how to design new farm technology so that it can support an agricul-
tural policy intended to be within the reach of small farmers as well
as within the servicing capacity of government field services. To pro-
gress in this direction, research workers need to understand more
clearly than they do the underlying objectives and constraints of the
existing farming systems, and the points at which they are capable
of absorbing innovation.

11
Ill Farmer Organisation and Delivery
of Services
It was suggested in the Plenary Address by Guy Hunter that the
organisation of farmers' groups and the delivery of services to the
farmer have usually been seen from two opposite approaches. The
first starts with the farmer and village community, and asks how
energy and effort can be mobilised there to provide a dynamic force
without which agricultural development can barely be kept moving.
This approach deals with self-organisation of farmers, up to the level
of co-operatives, which may be in themselves the means of providing
services of many different kinds to the farmer-membership.
The second approach starts from the government end, and asks
how government can stimulate farmer groupings, how the extension
service can be organised to provide technical advice and other inputs,
and how the various departments of government can be co-ordinated,
both for planning and at the field level.
In both approaches both sides must play a part. Little success can
be expected from farmer organisations unless supported initially from
outside; and no extension service can succeed without a vigorous
response from below. In both cases a great deal will depend upon
situation and timing. Organisation, on each side of the point where
local effort and government effort meet, depends heavily on whether
it is designed for the earliest stages of development (eg for a tribal,
traditional, semi-subsistence economy) or for much later stages, in
which the farming community is already advancing rapidly in sophis-
tication.

The Papers
The Papers can initially be divided into three rather similar groups,
leaving out the Paper by Uma Lele on Project Design and Manage-
ment, and the two Papers by Scarlett Epstein, and D. H. Penny and
Masri Singarimbun, which will be dealt with later.
The Plenary Address by Shoaib Sultan Khan concentrated mainly
on the side of popular effort and of 'listening to the farmer', with close
support from government to meet ascertained needs of local farming
communities. He explained in some detail the type of local organ-
isation which is being built up in the North West Frontier Province of
Pakistan to service the groups of farmers forming in certain areas in
response to official visits, at which farmers were encouraged to spell
out their most urgent needs. The Paper by D. Gentil illustrated the
careful growth of a participatory organisation of farmers in Niger,
stimulated and supported by government. Papers by J. Gordon

12
 FARMER ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES

(Ghana) and P. Mbithi (Kenya) gave some indication of how volun-

tary organisations can often respond rather more flexibly than govern-
ment to the demands of local communities. The account by R. Dean
and A. Moyes of voluntary 'integrated' schemes of agricultural, health
and educational improvement in Guatemala and the Paper by W. M.
Dyal describing the support given by the Inter-American Foundation
to a wide range of local initiatives should also be grouped here.
When it comes to the creation of much more formal co-operatives,
we are in a halfway house between governmental and community
action. J. M. Texier's Paper dealt with the formation of small, pre-co-
operative groupings at the primary level, supported at the secondary
level by a more formalised organisation for commercial managements;
B. J. Youngjohns, in a detailed survey of the aims, tasks and organisa-
tion of formal co-operatives, emphasised that two, sometimes con-
flicting, roles were expected from them democratic, cohesive self-
government among a self-chosen co-operative membership, and effi-
cient performance of quite complex financial and commercial opera-
tions in an organisation favoured and quite closely controlled by
government as a tool for carrying commercial functions in place of
private traders. From a social-anthropologist's viewpoint, Goran
Hyden's Paper pointed out how the values and norms of action
strongly imbedded in clan and patronage groups would be repealed in
the methods of management of such groups when organised, for devel-
opment purposes, into co-operatives. These very significant findings
were to play a considerable part in the subsequent discussion. As a
pendant to this group of Papers, G. E. Hansen's Paper on some experi-
mental institutions in Indonesia further points the moral that large,
semi-representative institutions, established as a result of government
policy or pressure, have normally a poor chance of survival and effi-
ciency; but the Paper on Farmer Associations in Taiwan (T. H. Shen)
quotes a notable exception to this rule, in its record of complex organ-
isation built up, over a long time period, by determined and commer-
cially sound government policies.
The Papers dealing directly with government extension services
covered cases from the Philippines (G. Castillo), Ecuador and Para-
guay (J. Higgs), Ghana (E. Bortei-Doku), Uganda (R. Watts), Cyprus
and the Solomon Islands (G. Jones and M. Rolls), Nigeria (Q. B. O.
Anthonio with A. U. Patel and C. A. Osuntogun), from the Shell
experiments in Italy, and from India (K. Subramanyam). Considering
the geographical range, they make, on the whole, very depressing read-
ing. In almost all of them the deficiencies, of many kinds, of the cur-
rent samples of extension work show up painfully. In the Philippines
the more sophisticated farmers doubt the technical competence of
young extension staff; in Ecuador and Paraguay numbers, training and
deployment are inadequate to cover even a quarter of the farming

13
IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

community: in Ghana serious problems of communications with the

farmer weaken the service; in Cyprus there are conflicts between the
economic farm management advice of the Extension Service and the
necessities of village life; in Nigeria inadequate access to services and
some conflict between the modernising institutions (co-operatives,
credit) and more traditional ways of meeting needs. In contrast to this
attempt at wide coverage with inadequate staff and training, the Shell
experiments show what can be achieved by a single officer, with first-
rate training and support, if he is given time and opportunity to get to
know local people and local problems more thoroughly. The need for
time and detailed knowledge is re-emphasized by Watts's description
of pilot research smallholdings, where the farmer's performance is
monitored in great detail by Makerere University staff. The staff dis-
covered many more of the real reasons why changes in farm practice
and farm management are far more difficult for the smallholder than
is often believed.
Two extracts from published books (Scarlett Epstein and D. H.
Penny with Masri Singarimbun) record exceptionally successful
sequences of development among particular groups in the Pacific and
in Sumatra, in which progressive development of indigenous institu-
tions and initiatives, with fairly minor government support, seem to
have played the leading part. Mrs. Epstein's contribution is a rare
example of the tracing of the steps of change from a traditional system
towards a commercialised agriculture.

Discussion
It is extremely hard to identify any consensus on major elements of
this subject, partly because the Seminar here came nearest to well-
worn discussion of the training and quality of extension officers and
the need to mobilise the effort and enthusiasm of farmers. Further,
while two of the three groups charged with this issue as a special sub-
ject for the final summary made a large number of practical 'tinker-
ing' suggestions, the third emphasised the view, strongly held in Latin
America, that without major political restructuring there was little
hope of effective help to the smaller farmers.
There were, however, three or four points which have not been
thoroughly discussed in earlier literature and meetings. First, a good
deal of discussion arose round the issue of how the real local needs
and opportunities can be better identified; and this issue links closely
to discussion of farming systems in Section II. In fact, extension staff
usually have little opportunity to identify and little discretion to act
according to their judgment. Nor are they trained to listen rather than
to instruct or deliver a pre-packaged programme decided upon at
much higher levels of government. Such packages often reflect

14
 FARMER ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES

a national need (eg for more home-grown cotton): a particular tech-

nique (high-yielding seed plus chemical fertiliser); or a broad general-
isation about potential (soil, rainfall, etc) which may not prove app-
licable in many local circumstances.
There was little decisive discussion of how to identify the chief con-
straints and chief opportunities for change within these systems on a
scale, at a cost, and at a speed which would be administratively pos-
sible and acceptable. In projects and other specially favoured pro-
grammes, initial diagnosis is heavily stressed and often carried out by
experts far senior in training and experience to the normal field staff.
Really detailed research might require a team (agronomist, economist
and sociologist) for a minimum of six months to tackle a single system
over a fairly small area; on a large scale, this is impracticable. Prob-
ably a combination of two methods might be workable. For fairly
uniform major areas in India eg parts of the Gangetic Plain the
University should be able to set up such a team to cover, say, three
scattered sample areas in depth; and their work would provide a
check-list of problems to which a less skilled assessor should keep his
eyes open. Meanwhile, for month-by-month working of the extension
and other field services, the District team of staff, with minor
strengthening as training output increases, should be able, block by
block, to review the suitability of current programmes, and identify
any special needs of a block (a bridge, storage, road, water or land
improvement), in consultation with farmer organisations and with
reference to a specialist if necessary. Regular periods (of about two
weeks?) could be set aside for each of these reviews at intervals in
the year.
In general, it is clear that, since development is essentially an inter-
disciplinary activity, much more attention needs to be given to the
management of surveys, to the interaction between specialists, and to
avoiding the omission of essential and relevant information before pro-
grammes are finalised.
Secondly, it seemed to be fairly widely agreed that, while action to
improve health, education etc is clearly part of a wide rural develop-
ment programme, such efforts should be related to the national capa-
city to spend revenue on clinics, schools, etc and therefore fall natur-
ally to the programmes of existing Departments of Health or Educa-
tion, rather than special branches of 'project organisation', which are
apt to favour their small area disproportionately. Better incomes to
the small and poor farmers (of which much will be spent on food) and
rising employment generated from such incomes, form a better basis
both of finance and of self-respect from which social services can be
improved; and such income rises flow mainly from agricultural output,
strengthened by physical infrastructure (roads, water-control, etc). The
Paper by Uma Lele emphasises this point and also warns that pro-

15
IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

jects which collect up many functions from various Departments often

find difficulty in handing them back when the project phase ends.
A third point of fairly wide agreement was an emphasis on the
different role of extension services as between the earliest phase of
changing a traditional system, and a phase when farmers have become
far more sophisticated and cash-conscious. The earliest phase demands
the ability to listen, gain trust, stimulate groupings or organisation
among farmers, with a fairly simple technical input. A strong case can
be made, in some areas, for using members of the farming community
itself as leaders and extension officers provided that they are well
supported with information and periodic short training. The later
phase demands much better technical and farm-management skills, as
farmers ask for more specialised advice. Since whole countries, or even
provinces, almost never move all together to higher levels of technical
performance, the technical training of extension staff is virtually
wasted in some areas (except for 'diagnosis', which may require a tem-
porary but special skill input) and becomes quite inadequate in others.
This would imply much more flexible management and deployment of
field staff, related to their local task.
Finally, with the exception of some members who felt, for various
reasons, absolutely committed to the co-operative as a generally app-
licable tool of organisation, there was considerable support for smaller,
need-oriented farmer groupings (eg to run a tubewell or finance local
storage), partly as a means of focusing real local cohesiveness, partly
to avoid the danger (mentioned above) that larger, whole-community
organisations are apt to replicate the power-cum-wealth-dominated
structure of the local community as a whole. While there was 100%
support for co-operatives based on local enthusiasm and acting as a
help to the smaller men in their struggle for more equal access to bene-
fits, there was far less enthusiasm for co-operatives used simply as a
convenient tool for distributing government services, particularly
where membership is semi-compulsory by making it a condition for
the receipt of such (often subsidised) services. Clearly, the smaller and
less formal groupings, where they succeed, might well develop into
more formal co-operatives, as their experience and self-confidence
increased; by that time the membership might well be able to stand up
better to any threat of exploitation.
In general, the Seminar as a whole seemed to move towards the
view that agricultural development, if it is to come, must come prim-
arily from the aroused energies of farming communities, and that
the role of government lies mainly in presenting viable opportunities,
in stimulating and supporting farmer groups, in investment where (as
nearly always) the physical environment is a constraint, and in neces-
sary technical or social control. It may well be true that some govern-
ments de facto do not wish such development from below. But until

16
 FARMER ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES

the organisation of extension and supply services, even at the existing

level of investment, at least avoids more of the proven mistakes and
inefficiencies, it is premature to attribute all failures to political
obstruction, save in countries where political forces are continuously
and pervasively designed to prevent progress. In most countries the
opportunities for advance have not yet been exhausted.
This stress on the development of local capacity and the need to hus-
band scarce resources of government administrative and technical
manpower chimes well with one central thesis of Uma Lele's Paper
on major projects undertaken by the World Bank in Africa. The Paper
emphasises the danger of building up a structure of skill and adminis-
trative capacity in a project (often with Technical Assistance help)
which could not be replicated on a wider scale, especially if the project
does not have time to build up equivalent skills, training output and
experience from within the country concerned. Lasting development
will only come from the growth of such local abilities.
Finally, the 'job descriptions' for extension staff, so often written at
conferences, often imply a volume of staff with a quality of technical
knowledge, social skill in communication, diligence, devotion and
range of imagination which the richest countries would be proud to
possess. In practice, those governments may fare best who find the
best way of using the simple staff at their disposal, and who elicit and
encourage from the community itself the practical abilities of its mem-
bers for local action in the local circumstances of their own life.

17
IV The Commercial Function
The supply, distribution, selling and buying of farm inputs, the financ-
ing of this process, and the processing, storage and marketing of farm
outputs is, prima facie, an important element of trade and commerce;
and most of the classical economic studies of these processes are, with
modifications, applicable. Questions of prices, margins, wholesale and
retail distribution, the skills required of the trader, and the conditions
under which trade can prosper to the mutual benefit of both buyer and
seller, have been exhaustively studied.
The reason for two reservations in this statement ('prima facie' and
'with modifications') arise from the fact that a very large number of
governments in developing countries have rejected all, or part of, the
concept of the free market, on the grounds that it is inequitable to the
producer, and especially to the small producer; his purchase of inputs
costs too much, and his outputs sell for too little. Government inter-
vention therefore takes place at two main points; to subsidize inputs,
either by price subsidy or by subsidised credit, or by both; and to dis-
place the trader-purchaser by forms of purchase by government or by
publicly-controlled marketing boards, or through a co-operative trad-
ing system. The attempt to construct publicly or communally managed
trading systems thus inevitably forms a very large part of the agenda
for discussion of this whole topic. Most of the very varied issues dis-
cussed in fact concerned a single question how efficiently do these
managed systems work, what are their real total costs to the economy,
by how much is the producer and particularly the small producer
benefited by them? In more detail, there are also the questions, which
type of managed system works best (in certain conditions), and at
what point or points in the whole process is government intervention
most effective in both minimising costs and maximising benefits?
Resources have to be allocated in an orderly way. If the free market
is ineffective in some sector, government has various choices of where
and when to intervene. There are also choices in the method of inter-
vention, from total take-over to relatively minor adjustment and super-
vision.
It may be convenient to discuss the work of the Seminar under six
main headings: 1) the open market; 2) government purchasing; 3)
co-operative trading; 4) fully integrated management of inputs, credit
and output for single crops; 5) financing (credit, etc); 6) supply (fert-
iliser, pesticide) and storage, and to deal with both Papers and Discus-
sion for each heading.
The open market
Lord Seebohm, in his Plenary Address, after a wide definition of the
commercial function in development, set out extremely clearly the sort
18
 THE COMMERCIAL FUNCTION

of conditions in which a commercial bank or trading company could

invest with prospects of reasonable return on capital and reasonable
prices to producers conditions in which the size of marketable
surpluses, the accessibility of producers, and the quality and uniformity
of the product (three vital factors in the costs of buying) inevitably
played a large part.
At the lower level of small-scale commerce, however, traders can
show quite a lot of enterprise in conditions which would not appeal to
the larger commercial units. Some members felt that Lord Seebohm's
statement that such traders were useful in static conditions but not for
dynamic change was not applicable at this level. F. A. Wilson's Paper
described some interesting strengths and weaknesses in the marketing
of fruit and vegetables in Kenya; and Miss Chen mentioned the con-
tinuing significance of the free market for minor produce in main-
land China.
There was discussion in some groups on this subject, and more than
one was inclined to take the view that, where traditional trading
systems exist (and it is rare to find no form of interchange), the first
step should be to support them and make them both more efficient and
more competitive. It is at this point that improvement in weights and
measures, access and transport, market buildings, and effective regula-
tion were primarily discussed. The point was also made that many
traders are operating on a very humble scale; trade provides employ-
ment for some of the poorest members of the community. The private
trader is free of cost to public funds; his labour costs may be lowered
by using unpaid family help; he may be selling to as well as buying
from the farmer, and in general his unit costs may be lowered by the
wide range of miscellaneous jobs he can do. Some much needed
research on the social position and functions of such traders would
be more useful than a blanket condemnation.
There are, unfortunately, many areas of the developing world where
producers, in a mainly subsistence economy, are not served by all-
weather roads, and produce extremely small individual quantities, of
uneven quality, as surpluses for sale. Since these are surpluses over
subsistence needs, they also fluctuate from year to year. Where the
products are also perishable, it is hard to see how any improvement
can be made on a very local market, to which goods come by head-
load. With less perishable goods, systems of locally licensed buyers,
gradually amassing sizable quantities, destined for a more central
purchaser (as in much West African palm and cocoa trading) become
feasible. Beyond this, a process of simultaneous 'opening up' the area
by road and intensive extension effort to develop a worthwhile cash-
crop appears to be the next step. At this point, sub-systems of shared
transport and possibly storage, perhaps through forms of co-opera-
tion, may be important.

19
IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

Government/marketing board operations

There was little new to say here. The Paper by Peter Stutley outlined
well the assumptions and aims which commonly govern state action in
this field, the tendencies to be drawn further and further into the pro-
curement and marketing field, to understate the full real costs of these
operations, and to use marketing board surpluses as a convenient way
to transfer resources from the rural producers to investments in the
modern sector (which is apt to be a transfer from the poor to the rich).
The Papers by Peter Schran and by Miss Chen both gave the impres-
sion that state operations on key crops in mainland China, where the
government has complete control of the marketing of the crops con-
cerned, was operated effectively through a fairly simple structure of
purchasing, relying heavily on the integrity and efficiency of the cadres
at Commune level. What the costs, or the returns to the producer, or
the degree of transfer of resources may be in this system is extremely
hard to estimate, since payment by 'work-units' can be varied in real
content, and the system does not appear to be costed in monetary
terms.
The two Working Papers by Mrs Harriss gave a useful glimpse of
the complex situations which arise when government makes a partial
intervention in the business of fertiliser distribution, and in the attempt
to subsidise food prices to a class of the poorest consumers. Partial
interventions, often in times of scarcity, in a market system which is
not fully controlled, liable to wide fluctuations and sometimes not fully
understood, are likely to run into great difficulties.
Outside China, it would seem that the more successful and efficient
systems are usually based on single crops, where specialisation of staff
is possible, and on crops of fairly high value which will cover the
rather high bureaucratic management costs. On the other hand, central
handling of staple cereals, where the farming system is not specialised
to grow these primarily as marketed ('cash') crops, is seldom efficient,
constantly bedevilled by large fluctuations in output (for weather
reasons), and leakages of the crop into local black markets and other
uses. It can, however, be argued in favour of official procurement of
staple foods that government, as a buyer of last resort, helps to reduce
fluctuations, and can use its operations to acquire famine reserve
stocks.

Co-operative methods
A powerful plea was made in the Paper by Gavin Green for the
marketing co-operative as the best tool for handling not-immediately-
consumable cash crops, illustrated mainly from experience of East
Africa. In the detail of this Paper is found a heavy emphasis on man-
agement training of the staff, on accounting and audit, and on proper

20
 THE COMMERCIAL FUNCTION

payment and career prospects for the staff. It is certainly difficult to

know whether to take the too-frequent failures of co-operatives as a
sign that too much is being asked of small farmers, at their present
level (in a given country) of education and commercial aptitude, so
that simpler or more officially managed systems are needed; or
whether to regard the failures as a process of learning and advance
which is inevitable, and to point more resolutely to the successes
(which are considerable) and to the basic logic of the system.
It does, however, appear to be true that, where there is a fairly well
developed indigenous private trading system, co-operatives have
extreme difficulty in competing successfully with it, and particularly in
the case of staple cereal crops. Even where co-operatives are the
approved source of subsidised credit to farmers, it has certainly been
true in the Indian sub-continent that far too often the crop has been
sold to private traders, making the credit-debt very hard to recover.
This may happen not because of the price offered by the trader, which
may be lower than the co-operative price, but because of the conven-
ience of an immediate cash payment, at the farm gate, as against a
much delayed co-operative payment for a crop delivered at the
farmer's expense to a co-operative buying point. The final rap-
porteur's statement on this issue stressed the difficulty of handling
staple foods and the greater success with crops requiring processing,
with a single (domestic or international) marketing channel, and made
a plea for more realistic expectations of what co-operatives can do,
simpler tasks, more training of staff, and acceptance of a longer
period of learning and build-up before looking to substantial success.

Integrated single crop management

The Papers by T. A. Phillips and M. P. Collinson, K. Padmanabhaiah,
Tunku Mansur Yacoob, R. H. Thakar and that of Dr. Waheeduddin
Khan1 refer to management systems covering tea, sugar, tobacco, milk,
rubber and palm oil production under various authorities (Common-
wealth Development Corporation, co-operative, Federal Land Devel-
opment Authority, company or public board). The systems could be
regarded as an evolution from plantation systems, under the pressure
to preserve smallholdings and to harness the self-interest of the small-
holder (as contrasted with the plantation employee) in improving the
volume and quality of output. In all cases the system consists of a
central management organisation providing to growers services which
frequently include research, provision of seed or plants, credit, techni-
cal advice, purchase, grading, processing and sale. Not all provide
every one of these services. The key factors in this system are: 1) the
1 In Guy Hunter and Anthony Bottrall (eds.) Serving the Small Farmer. Croom
Helm for the Overseas Development Institute, London, 1973.

21
IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

co-ordination of management in a single efficiently run centre; 2) total

control of the purchasing and marketing of the crop; 3) services,
incentives and supervision to the growers, and a considerable degree
of farmer discipline, without which the timing of deliveries and the
quality and uniformity of the product to satisfy market requirements
cannot be maintained. The discipline is, of course, most easily ensured
in monopoly conditions.
There seems little doubt that these systems have had the highest
degree of success of all the tools of agricultural development. While
the element of monopoly could be disadvantageous to growers, in fact
it is relatively visible and easy to control by government. (Govern-
ments do not always apply the same critical eye to their own monop-
olies.)
Only two points require special mention. First, concentration on a
single crop, when the grower may have a mixed farm (eg growing a
food crop or another minor cash crop), may at least postpone a stage
when the productivity of the farm as a whole, and the allocation of
land to various purposes, is properly considered. Second, management
costs are fairly high, and this makes such systems difficult to apply to
low-value food crops. However, the fact that the full costs of unco-
ordinated management (government extension service, subsidised
credit, private marketing, government research station, etc) are seldom
added up realistically, for comparison with costs of the integrated
system, must modify judgments of cost.
No detailed suggestion for the extension of integrated systems of
this kind to other types of crop emerged from the Seminar, probably
because the key conditions would not be satisfied. But, within these
conditions, there is doubtless room for geographical expansion.
Financing inputs and farm investment
Four Papers to the Seminar deal with this subject by J. C. Abbott,
on the subject of credit to small-scale and traditional livestock farmers;
by F. A. Wilson, on the experiments in credit from commercial banks
to farmers in Zambia; by .T. D. von Pischke on Kenya co-operative
savings schemes; and, finally, by A. F. Bottrall, in his very valuable
and concentrated review of some of the main conclusions of econ-
omists and others (including the massive AID Spring Review) on the
costs and benefits of institutional credit schemes, with additional com-
ments on savings, private sources of finance, and the role of banks.
This subject by itself would have been worth a full day's discussion:
but the Papers are of very high quality, and participants will be able
to study them at leisure. The final report by Uma Lele concentrated
on a few main points that short-term credit is costly and ineffective
unless a viable and profitable technology, which small farmers have the
ability and the will to adopt, is effectively available to them; that
22
 THE COMMERCIAL FUNCTION

interest rates must cover the full costs of credit administration and
that subsidised rates not only distort the rural money market but can
act to the positive detriment of the smaller farmer in a number of
ways (mostly mentioned in Bottrall's Paper): and that realistic rates
will still reduce the cost of credit to the farmer hi cases where extor-
tionate rates have previously been charged. These remarks apply
particularly to short-term (seasonal) credit; for loans over periods of
several years, where substantial assets are likely to be involved, and
where individual loans are usually much bigger, rates can often be
lower, and may have to be if the investment is still to be profitable to
the borrower.
Over the years, very large sums indeed have been poured out
through official credit schemes, with a bad record of value for the
resources committed. It is timely that this Seminar should have looked
with an extremely critical eye at the assumption, so widespread among
donors and administrators as to be almost automatic, that institu-
tional, often subsidised, short-term credit is a first necessity for induc-
ing small farmers to adopt innovations. It may well be the very last
resort, when it has been proved that savings are impossible, that there
is no cash flow in the lower levels of the rural economy, that family
systems or traditional arrangements for loans do not exist, that the
proposed innovation is readily acceptable and can be properly serviced
by timely inputs, that less expensive inputs could not give small
farmers a considerable gain as a first step in a word, that it is simply
and solely the lack of £15-20 of crop-season credit which is prevent-
ing adoption. These conditions will not readily be fulfilled in many
parts of the developing world. Where they are fulfilled, it is unlikely
that farmers would reject crop-season credit for two acres' worth of
inputs at a six month interest rate of 10% or 12%. If the innovation
is worth the effort, it should very quickly put the farmer in a position
where he is both creditworthy, less dependent on short-term credit,
or able to use more substantial credit for investment in still higher
productivity.
Supply and storage
Two Papers on supply of inputs by D. J. Halliday on the FAO
fertiliser programme, and by C. J. Lewis on the costs and results of
product and market development enterprise (pesticide) provided
the Seminar with somewhat contrasting implications. The fertiliser
programme was, de facto, heavily subsidised, the initial supplies being
donated (by donor governments or by the industry) and sold on credit
terms ('at a moderate or sometimes purely nominal rate') so as to
provide a revolving fund for subsequent fertiliser purchases. Further,
areas chosen for the scheme (as in the case of the Indian IADP)
were the most favourable, criteria of choice including 'presence of cap-
23
IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

able extension officer, favourable attitude among farmers and local

authorities, easy availability of banking services and existence of
favourable infrastructure (eg all-weather roads, post office, etc)'.
These criteria may have been wise, and have no doubt had a good
effect in spreading the knowledge of fertiliser use; but they limit the
lessons to be learned about agricultural development in circumstances
which are so often far less attractive.
In contrast, the campaign described by Mr Lewis was a carefully
costed attempt to measure the effort required to market, at an econ-
omic price, a package of pesticide or herbicide measures in four
Blocks of one District in India. Although the indications were that a
five-year effort might produce results which would be commercially
viable, the investigation proved the very large effort of planning and
expert advice necessary to cover even a part of one of India's
325 Districts.
These two Papers go to show just how much time and patience will
be needed to achieve the conventional 'Green Revolution' over a more
substantial proportion of the developing world, and particularly among
the smaller farmers. It must be added that 'single item' campaigns
are bound to be far more doubtful in results than programmes which,
from the start, deal with the whole farming system and seek to loosen
its key constraints; for neither fertiliser (as was so well shown in the
Minimum Package Programme of Ethiopia) nor pesticide may be the
key to agricultural advance in many areas, which may yield to water
supply, or stall-fed animal production, or a road, or a price, but more
usually to several factors in a critical combination.
As to storage, a short challenging Paper by Dr. Polly Hill illustrates
how intimately traditional on-farm storage is related to the household
economy and the process and timing of marketing crops; and the
Paper by P. E. Wheatley and D. Adair, dealing more widely with stor-
age and processing problems, also emphasises the need for research in
developing countries on the improvement of these methods. There is
often no local agency concerned with the improvement of existing
storage or processing technology or the introduction of new methods.
To add to the worries of plant breeders, some members suggested that
'storeability' should be, where it is not already, one criterion in select-
ing strains for release to farmers.
There is little doubt that storage is a factor of prime importance to
the small farmer's income; that better storage space for small traders
is much needed; and that, in terms of total food supply, reduction of
crop losses in the field, in transport, and in storage, are major issues.
In some areas local storage systems are clearly within the task of
extension, as they probably should be. But this is an expert subject,
and some additional training is required within the extension service,
in detail for a specialist officer and on general principles for all staff.

24
V Administration
Although the structure and style of government administration, and
the desirable quality and role of both its local levels and of local repre-
sentative organisation, are indeed well-worn topics, some extremely
worthwhile discussion took place on these subjects, no doubt partly
due to the evenly high quality of the Papers and to the shapeliness and
strategic level of the Plenary Address (by B. Sivaraman). The criteria
of relevance to the Seminar as a whole used in this section are rele-
vance 1) to earlier discussion; 2) to the movement of opinion; 3) to
political factors, and 4) to choices of action. The section is divided
into; issues affecting central government; local planning, management
and politics; effects of place and time; major political issues; and
practical implications.

The central level

What is done by the centre, and what is demanded by the centre,
affects and often constrains what can be done at local level. Since so
much of the discussion of earlier issues emphasized the need both for
far better knowledge of the field situation in its realities (farming
systems, etc) and far wider discretion to adapt action to these realities,
it was natural that much discussion was directed to loosening the grip
of the centre. In terms of programmes, there was an emphasis on
broad guidelines, to be turned into programmes more locally, and a
strong aversion to centrally-decreed targets. In terms of finance, a
similar emphasis on broader headings and limits, with less constant
upward reference for authority to incur expenditure within already
agreed main headings; but the importance both of audit and of annual
budgeting locally, as a normal exercise of prudent administration, was
also stressed. The Paper by K. Davey was a useful check on over-
enthusiasm. There was a general sense that demands from the centre
for statistics (quite often due to the over-anxiety of donors and also
of planners) should be much reduced: whether in industry or in
government, the judgment of what is the absolute minimum of key
statistics is a fine art, too often neglected.
In terms of structure, the tendency to top-heaviness at the centre
was countered by two main suggestions first, that very strong reasons
are needed to justify the creation of special new departments, author-
ities or boards to meet apparently new needs, rather than modifying
or re-invigorating existing ones; and, second, that conditions of serv-
ice, incentives and career rewards for field staffs need to be improved.
Further, the tendency for government to accept or invade func-
tions which could be carried by other agencies (eg commerce or local
government) should be sharply restrained. In Africa particularly, the

25
IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

temptation to believe that, if something needs to be done, government

must do it, is a legacy from relatively recent colonial government in
societies which, even by the time of independence, had not generated
much of the indigenous manpower and experience for non-govern-
mental initiative and management, whether in strong modern institu-
tions of the community or in the major units of commerce and indus-
try. Finally, it was agreed that in certain fields central rationing of
resource-use would have to be accepted, and in certain fields (eg con-
servation, disease control) an element of compulsion would be needed,
with the appropriate delegation to field agencies.

The local level

It was suggested that, ideally, the outline planning of local agricultural
(and associated) programmes should be done at the lowest level where
a varied administrative and technical staff of adequate training and
experience can be provided this level can be called 'the District',
assuming there to be a lower level ('the Block') at which the final
detail and field operation is executed. Papers by C. Andrade and H. B.
Fisher on regional planning, and by A. F. Mercer on physical plan-
ning for the large Lilongwe project refer. At this point issues of inter-
departmental 'co-ordination' always arise. At least one discussion
group made the forcible point that co-ordination is apt to be con-
sidered only at the moment of implementation; and there are in fact
insuperable difficulties when it is discovered as is almost inevitable
that the co-ordination of departmental policies at the headquarters
planning stage had failed to foresee the multiple ways in which even
broadly co-ordinated plans, made at a distance, are found, by the test
of local reality, to have unexpected inner implications of conflict. The
answer suggested is that, as far as is humanly possible, planning should
be done by those who have local responsibility for implementation,
and adjusted within this working-team relationship. Co-ordination, as
has long been realised in large industry, springs from the requirements
of the facts and of the science (engineering, water control, agronomy)
involved, not from the 'authority' of a generalist 'co-ordinator' (which
is always resented), save in last resort or emergency situations.
It is here that the Papers on management (D. Belshaw and twin
Papers by R. Chambers) were particularly relevant. Although there is
considerable and valuable detail in the suggested schemes for improv-
ing field-level administration, their emphasis is essentially on a style of
management which places far more stress on accurate job description,
achievement incentives, feed-back and repeated progress review;
Chambers suggests significant differences in style between positive
stimulation activities and policing and controlling activities. Some of

26
 ADMINISTRATION

the extension management systems have been tried in the field with
encouraging results.
Alongside these official systems the Seminar gave considerable
thought to local representative and political action. There was, on the
whole, a fairly wide consensus in favour of the bolder policies of creat-
ing, and supporting with both authority and tax-raising powers, effec-
tive local political representation (the Paper by R. N. Haldipur
refers). The groups were not unaware of the objections of administra-
tors against 'political interference', of the dangers of party or factional
politics, or of the probability that priorities as seen locally are not
always consonant with priorities as seen at the centre. On this last
point there may even be a gain. For a multitude of small invest-
ments, meeting clear local needs, may very easily have a better benefit-
cost ratio than a single, large, centrally conceived scheme, and will at
least tend to give rural areas a better and more widely dispersed share
of investment capital. What was not taken fully into account at this
point in the argument is a very serious issue raised by both the Sivara-
man and the Hunter Papers that local elected bodies tend to be
captured by local elites of which more later. One further, and per-
haps decisive advantage of local political participation is that local
enthusiasm is better aroused thus than by officials: and that coercive
measures (see above) are infinitely easier to enforce if they are backed
by local leaders.

Time and place

As always, the Seminar was nervous of generalisation over such wide
disparities of situation and stage of development. Governments short
of trained personnel may have to adopt simpler, more authoritative
systems of administration, and attempt less. Extension services for
primarily subsistence communities will differ both in content and style
from those serving more technically sophisticated farming areas.
Government organisation, which may have to be heavily concentrated
at first on local initiatives, persuasion and services at field level, will
be relieved of some of this as farmers organise and positively seek
innovation, and as commerce develops to meet increasing demand and
increasing surpluses: government action will then be freer to concen-
trate more on central supply and control functions and more sophis-
ticated research and advisory service.

Larger political/administrative perspectives

Mr. Sivaraman's Plenary Address led the Seminar, by logical steps,
to confront directly two of the principal difficulties of the whole

27
IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

Seminar. The first is the difficulty of delivering services to millions of

small farmers. This he faced more confidently and more simply than
is usual. Clearly, personal service to every farmer by an extension
agent was impossible. Second, in India the larger farmers were already
getting adequate service, from both commerce and government. Since
the smaller men must be served, they must be encouraged to club
together in groups large enough to make service practicable, and pos-
sibly even to employ their own extension agent. For this purpose,
India established the concept of Farmer Service Societies at the local
level. The reward to farmers for forming groups will thus be a much
better service, supported by government.
The second difficulty is political. In a society such as that of India,
using universal suffrage under reasonably free conditions, the huge
majority of the poor can make their voice felt at the level of national
government, from their sheer numbers. Central politicians and the
central administration may therefore seek to help the poor and power-
less. But at the periphery, at village level, a local elite of the more
powerful and rich has such influence that, in a multitude of ways
(partly patronage, partly intimidation, partly manipulation) they can
dominate local elections. The local officers of the administration, by
themselves, are not easily able to break through this ring. It is there-
fore through less formal, non-elected groupings of small farmers, for
the technical purposes of agricultural innovation (including inputs,
credit and marketing), stimulated and supported by official services at
local level, that direct assistance can be given.1
We are left with some possible conflict between this solution and
the earlier consensus in favour of elected, tax-raising, and executive
local authorities, in which the same elitism is liable to be manifested.
The difficulty might be alleviated in one main way. If the informal
groups develop in success and self-confidence to a point where they
can widen their functions and assert themselves more strongly, a multi-
purpose elected body would be more democratically balanced, with
the advantage of including some of the richer and better-educated
members of the Community who, after all, have much to contribute,
including experience of the wider world, and have been regarded as
leaders, even if somewhat exploitative ones, in the past. This pattern
approximates very closely to the analysis in J. M. Texier's Paper.
This would lead to a suggestion that more formal, whole-village,
elective bodies might (where choice is possible) be established at the
second, rather than the initial, stage of development, giving time for
the emergence of a more equal balance within it.

1 The argument repeats the discussion, on the same general issue, as between
co-operatives and smaller need-oriented groupings.

28
 ADMINISTRATION

Implications
The consensus was clearly towards a more decentralised administra-
tion, and towards more vigorous and varied experiment with types of
small-farmer organisation, better management of field services and
more enterprising local planning to fit local conditions. In this con-
nection it is clear that a great deal more research is necessary, for
example, on local farming systems, and through experiments and
evaluations of different approaches to farmer organisation, including
records of the performance of the Small Farmer Development Agency
in India described in the Paper by Shri Venkatappiah and of Farmer
Service Societies as they become established. We need also better and
more detailed work on the exact possibilities of local planning (at
about District level) and on the degree of discretionary power which
can devolve from the central administration and from the central plan-
ning organisation, whatever its form. The work of Chambers and
Belshaw on the management of field implementation needs a comple-
mentary input on programme planning, with the same depth and
close reference to practice. Trapman's small book on administrative
structures1 opens up several possible fields of further research and,
indeed, the Ford Foundation's Indian work is also highly relevant.
The experience of the Special Rural Development Programme in
Kenya, upon which Trapman drew, could be more fully analysed,
since the programmes in individual areas were preceded by an
extended planning phase, in which local opinions and suggestions were
actively sought. The present estimate is that the local contribution was
disappointing, possibly because staff were below establishment, over-
worked and too frequently transferred. Much of any success which
can attend efforts to fit programmes better to local areas depends upon
overcoming these difficulties and defining far more closely the exact
contribution which must come from local and from central sources.

1 Christopher Trapman, Change in Administrative Structures: A Case Study of

Kenyan Agricultural Development. Overseas Development Institute, London
1974.

29
VI Conclusion
The general field — subsistence and market
In the opening address to the Seminar, Professor Bunting laid an over-
riding emphasis on 'sales off the farm', almost as shorthand for the
main concern of agricultural development.
In a great number of ways this remark was illustrated in the pro-
ceedings of the Seminar. Again and again, some of the most hopeful
methods of organising production, credit and marketing had to be
qualified by a rider: 'This would not apply to staple foods largely for
subsistence consumption with only a very small, locally sold, almost
unprocessed surplus'. Indeed, if we look at the broad history of agri-
cultural development in Africa and Asia over the last half-century,
the major successes would surely include the Gezira cotton scheme,
the development of tea, sugar, tobacco, cotton, coffee, and dairy
schemes in East Africa, and of cocoa, palm products and groundnuts
in West Africa; rubber and palm products in Malaysia; a similar range
of commodity production schemes in South Asia, though without the
emphasis on coffee or cocoa. A variety of types of production organ-
isation are included in these successes sometimes a major, centrally-
managed scheme, under a company, co-operative or board, but some-
times (cocoa, milk, cereals, African-grown coffee) from individual
small farmers. The common factor lies in the highly organised market-
ing systems.
This list of successes has not yet mentioned the Green Revolution
the success in staple cereals, wheat in Mexico and the Punjab, hybrid
maize, and the re-invigoration of rice-growing in South and South-east
Asia. Here, apparently, is an unusual success in staple cereal foods.
But, most noticeably in the case of Punjab wheat, and to a lesser
degree in the case of rice, these successes come, in the main, from
market-oriented farmers with substantial marketable surpluses from
medium- to large-sized farms, although a small fraction of three-four
acre farmers were included. With rather larger 'small' holdings in parts
of East Africa (ie a lower percentage below ten acres than in India)
the improved maize has penetrated lower down the scale.
This, then, is 'cash-crop' production, even where a staple cereal is
involved. Far less dramatic, and often almost negligible, is the success
in improving staple food crops grown for subsistence, where at most a
small proportion of output enters a multitude of free-market channels.
Yet the great majority of the very small farmers are in fact primarily
subsistence farmers, and constitute, with the labourers, the core of
rural poverty. The Green Revolution tackled this problem on the
assumption that the subsistence farmer could be made into a market
farmer by the same capital-intensive system of high inputs of seed,

30
 CONCLUSION

fertiliser and protective chemicals, supplied on credit, which worked

well enough for large farmers growing for the market. Although tech-
nically these innovations are neutral to scale, no doubt we should
have seen much sooner, and more clearly, that for a number of
reasons this was a false assumption. To consider credit only, it is
unlikely on the face of it that a farmer who was capable of providing
the staple food for his family at virtually zero cash cost (seed kept
from year to year, bullocks fed on crop residues and grass, dung or
green-manure fertilisation, low-yielding but disease- and drought-resist-
ant varieties) would be willing to spend precious cash to grow a crop
three-quarters of which he and his family would eat: and, if he did
take a loan, it was unlikely to be easily recovered. This would not
apply to the fifteen-thirty acres often held in the Punjab, of which a
small proportion only is needed for subsistence.
In the light of growing concern for poverty and income-distribution,
and now, as the World Food Conference shows, a sharp anxiety as
to the danger of famine precipitated by population growth and the
inadequacy of world food output and stocks, the problem of the semi-
subsistence farmer and of the approach to him assumes urgent import-
ance. Will higher cereal prices really induce him to treat his food crop
as a cash crop? In view of high fertiliser prices (there is also an energy
crisis) is it possible or even desirable to continue to persuade him to
reduce the share of land devoted to food (by new, fertiliser-using tech-
nology) and devote more to a non-self-consumed cash-crop such as
rubber, cocoa, jute or kenaf, silk, tobacco, cotton, which may also
require chemical-inputs? Uma Lele's Paper emphasised the danger to
nutrition of an excessive concentration on cash crops and the perhaps
dangerously high differential price incentives in favour of non-food
production.
Thus, one major residue from the Seminar discussions relates to the
techniques to be recommended to small, semi-subsistence farmers, to
the incentives which can be offered to them (prices of inputs and out-
puts), to the organisation and services which can be provided to them,
and to the advice which should be given to them to produce market-
able surpluses of staple foods or to minimise their food acreage and to
concentrate on the other 'cash-crops' which, in the past, have been the
engine of advance from a subsistence to a market farming economy.
And here, despite world food shortages, the very smallness of their
holdings tends to point to intensive cultivation of the highest value
crops, if farm income is to be markedly increased. Will cereals
become a high-value crop? If they do not, and if famine really
threatens, will the small food producer retreat into growing food with-
out chemical fertiliser, simply for his own survival?
A second major residue, whatever advice is to be given to small
farmers, relates to the means of giving it and supporting it. Here the

31
IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

Seminar traced the issues through their whole sequence from the
ways of identifying these needs, through the organisation of research
better calculated to meet them, to the training and deployment of field
staff, and to the stimulation of farmer-groupings through which the
field staff could work. As discussion proceeded it became increasingly
clear that the field staff must be able to cope with different situations
needing different skills. At their extremes, one situation is the virtu-
ally untouched traditional system, requiring one type of approach; the
other extreme is a far more sophisticated situation, needing less stimu-
lation but higher technical advisory skills. These two situations may
coexist not only in time but, to some degree, in place; and although
the small farmers may well be moving towards the more commercial-
ised end of the scale, this movement may be slow and irregular. Field
staff will have to be organised, trained, and deployed to deal with both
types of farming, in whatever proportions they may exist in a given
area and time.
The third major residue concerns commerce. In the orderly alloca-
tion of resources the extremes of choice are totally bureaucratic and
totally free market systems. But there are intermediate choices in the
real world. The Seminar clearly recognised a responsibility on govern-
ment to ensure that small producers had a fair opportunity both in
buying inputs and selling outputs. Yet many members, recognising the
multiple difficulties of widespread petty commercial operations carried
out through the public service, felt that in many countries a private
trading system should be more readily welcomed as an important
resource which can reduce the load on government, and that more
attention should be given to improving the facilities of the market, to
more efficient regulation and inspection, and to improved credit facil-
ities for buyers and stockists and for storage. The 'informal sector'
has at last been recognised as a major source of livelihood and employ-
ment, and much of this sector rests on small-scale trading, processing,
and services.
Finally, there was considerable discussion, in differing contexts, of
the need for certain key measures of discipline. As population pressure
mounts, so also does the need to conserve and even ration resources of
land, irrigation water, grazing, forest cover; as farmers move into a
market system, so do the commercial disciplines of regularity and
quality of production, and of disease-control, become more necessary.
The design of such disciplines, and of ways in which they can be made
acceptable, requires a good deal more research and discussion.

The state of the art

It will have been clear to anyone reading this Summary that, in study-
ing the implementation of agricultural and rural development, it has

32
 CONCLUSION

been necessary to traverse the boundaries of several disciplines

political science, sociology, public administration (with a dash of man-
agement theory) and economics, not to mention the physical and bio-
logical sciences and the unifying concepts of ecology, including its
human component. It is partly because agricultural development
involves such a wide range of factors that few efforts have been made
in the past to find generally applicable guidelines to the subject, or to
array the multiplicity of experience in any intellectual order an order
which would give to the administrator rational criteria for choice
between the varied courses of action available. These efforts have
been made more difficult by the obstacle which all the social sciences
have to overcome at their very outset that all social situations, in
the most detailed analysis, are in certain aspects unique. While the
need for generalisation is compelling for choices must be in some
degree rational its dangers have been heavily stressed, and never
more stressed than in this Seminar, which might indeed have had as
its theme-song that appropriate programmes for agricultural develop-
ment are both locale- and time-specific.
However, this objection is in some ways more specious than real.
For, granted the particular accidents of time and place, all social
sciences detect a number of more general principles which underlie
the variety of experience and which, used with due caution, can be
helpful. It was in order to make a start in suggesting such principles in
this subject that the Reading University/Overseas Development Insti-
tute joint research programme was initiated five years ago. The Paper
on the Reading/ODI research and hypothesis and my own Plenary
Address were deVoted to this attempt, and they are illustrated, in some
degree, by the product of this programme the book containing six
studies by Indian scholars, Trapman's small book on administrative
structures in Kenya, and the summaries of work from the Universities
of Ibadan and Ife.1
In outline, this work suggested that, in choosing an organisational
or institutional method (extension, credit, co-operative or other group-
ing, marketing organisation, etc) four main types of criteria are
needed: 1) social (attitudes, capacities and needs of farmers); 2) tech-
nical and economic (the physical environment, the pattern and density
of settlement, the technology available, and farm economics); 3) the
market system; and 4) the administrative resources available.
Of the six studies in Serving the Small Farmer two (by Dr Kahlon
and Dr R. Rao) were designed to illustrate the differences of organisa-
tion and approach needed at two opposite extremes of development

1 Guy Hunter and Anthony Bottrall, Serving the Small Farmer. Croom Helm
for the Overseas Development Institute. London 1973. Christopher Trapman.
Change in Administrative Structures. ODI, London 1974.

33
IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

the Punjab and a tribal area; one (by Dr Waheeduddin Khan) to

compare two integrated management schemes (tobacco, through a
company, and rubber, through a public board); one (by P. R. Sinha
and S. P. Jain) to examine both the democratic and the development
effectiveness of local, elected committees; and two (by Dr Jodha and
Professor S. Rao) to compare details of performance in contrasting
Blocks. It was noticeable, in Professor Rao's study, how the standard
pattern of Indian organisation (input distribution, credit and banks,
co-operatives) nourished and multiplied in the Blocks with highest
potential and withered to ineffectiveness in the more difficult ones: the
former area was ready for the market-oriented treatment, the latter
was not. To illustrate the 'locale-specificity' which local planners
should take into account, it is interesting that comparison of develop-
ment between Districts (l-£ million population) in Dr Jodha's study
hopelessly masked wide differences in local performance within Dis-
tricts: only comparisons at Block level (70,000-100,000 population)
were meaningful and showed the real differences.
Trapman's study of Kenyan agricultural administration shows an
organisational system having to move into reverse gear to meet
changed conditions. From a system of central Boards and Authorities,
geared to commercial farming by Europeans on sizable (eg 200-acre)
farms, the organisation had to be readjusted to serve twenty tunes as
many ten-acre African farmers; and this readjustment is not yet com-
plete. The two Nigerian studies seem to indicate that a system was
adopted for which the administrative resources of personnel and
infrastructure applied were far below the threshold of effectiveness in
staff/farmer ratio, mobility, distance (access to services) and relevance
thus illustrating the fourth criterion.
While this framework of reference has been of the greatest use to
me. and did in fact stimulate discussion in the Seminar, it is clear that
much more detailed work needs to be done to refine and characterise
categories and types of farming situations, to identify different
sequences of development as a whole process (here Scarlett Epstein's
Paper is of extreme interest), and to refine both the political and the
sociological approach. Here it is not eschatological generalisations
('nothing can be done before the Revolution') which will be helpful,
but practical studies of farmer groupings, 'leadership' at village and
Block level, the techniques needed (probably less capital-intensive) to
assist the poorer, smaller farmers to break out of their limiting and
limited farming pattern, the training and deployment of government
staff, and the ways by which a market system can be utilised without,
on the one hand, sacrificing all social justice, or, on the other, involv-
ing government in complete executive responsibility for the multi-
farious, detailed commercial activities on which improved agriculture
depends.

34
 CONCLUSION

One positive conclusion certainly emerged from the Seminar that

there are many different combinations or packages of organisation and
institutions (more than is often remembered) available to meet the
variety of total situations; that more flexibility and even inventiveness
is needed in this field; and that a better rationale for choosing the
appropriate package is needed. It may be that the rationale or theory
presented by Reading/ODI work is still at the phlogiston stage; but the
point is not to abandon it (and return to fashion) but to improve it.

Continued work
Year by year, despite the massive experience of the last twenty-five
years, governments, donors, or consultants set up or approve schemes
which have, from the record, minimal chances of success extension
without the necessary investment or mobility, credit schemes of very
high cost, co-operatives in circumstances where they have little chance
of fulfilling either their social or their economic purpose. Part at least
of the reason for this lies in the weakness of the development profes-
sion. In turn, this weakness can be split into two elements first, very
poor communication between doers and thinkers, and between fields of
action or discipline administrators, engineers, agronomists, physical
scientists, social scientists; second, the very absence of an adequate
analytical framework through which to guide choices of action. These
two weaknesses imply a low level of impact of the lessons of exper-
ience on practice.
As a first step .towards remedying these weaknesses, an experienced
group of Seminar members discussed, amended and finally approved,
as individuals, a proposal designed to improve communication across
these boundaries of action and discipline, to improve the state of the
art, and to improve its impact in action. A good deal more consulta-
tion will be needed before practical action can start on this proposal.
For the time being, this consultation will be undertaken by the Over-
seas Development Institute.

35
Addresses
1. Opening address (Mr. E. M. Martin, US Co-ordinator, World Food Con-
ference).
2. Plenary Lecture I: Change in Agriculture (A. H. Bunting, Professor oi
Agricultural Development Overseas, University of Reading).
3. Address on behalf of the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (Dr. M. Yudelman, Director, Department of Agriculture and
Rural Development, IBRD).
4. Plenary Lecture II: Effects of political policies (M. P.-M. Henry, President
of the Development Research Centre, OECD).
5. Plenary Lecture III: Effects of environmental, technical and economic
determinants (Mr. J. O. Akinwolemiwa, Controller of Agricultural Services,
Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources Secretariat, Ibadan,
Nigeria).
6. Plenary Lecture IV: Organisation and institutions and the Reading/ODI
Joint Programme (Guy Hunter, ODI).
7. Plenary Lecture V: Organisation in the community: institutions at the
grass roots (Mr. Shoaib Sultan Khan, Director, Pakistan Academy of Rural
Development, Peshawar, Pakistan).
8. Plenary Lecture VI: The commercial function efficiency and social
justice (Lord Seebohm, Barclays Bank).
9. Plenary Lecture VIII: The agriculture-industry continuum (Professor
Bruce Johnston, Food Research Institute, Stanford University, California).
10. Plenary Lecture VIII: Administrative tasks for Government (Shri B. Siva-
raman, Planning Commission, New Delhi).
11. Plenary Lecture IX: Review of the Seminar.

36
List of Papers
i
Sir Arthur Gaitskell: Alternative choices in development strategy and tactics:
The Mekong River Project in South East Asia as a case study.
Magdi El Kammash: Agricultural policy in Egypt.
Branko Stand: Agricultural development policy in Yugoslavia.
Peter Schran: The organisation of agricultural development in the Chinese
People's Republic.
Kuldeep Mathur: Organisational consequences of political policy: Agricultural
development and administration in India.
Solon L. Barraclongli: Interactions between agrarian structure and public
policies in Latin America.
W. Klatt: Causes and cures of agrarian unrest in Asia.
II
John W. Mcllor: Economic and social implications and choices related to
change in agricultural technology.
Randall Baker: Administration, technology transfer and nomadic pastoral
societies.
M. E. Adams: Development planning in the Savannah region of Western
Sudan.
Harts E. Jahnke and Hans Ruthenberg: Organisational aspects of livestock
development in the dry areas of Africa.
Brian Thomson and Guy Hunter: Agricultural development in Botswana:
Matching policy to administrative, ecological and social constraints.
N. S. Jodha: A semi-nomadic farm family (from the arid zone of Rajasthan).
D. S. Thornton: The organisation of irrigated areas.
/. B. Downs and N. Mountstephens: Farmer participation in irrigation schemes,
Northern Thailand.
John F. Cunningham: The development of locally manufactured irrigation
pumps in the Republic of Vietnam.
D. W. Norman: The organisational consequences of social and economic
constraints and policies in dry-land areas.
Laurence Roche: Agri-silviculture: a possible alternative to bush fallow in
Nigeria.
John W. Thomas: Public Works programmes: goals, results, administration.
Bcde N. Okigbo: Fitting research to farming systems: based on observations
and preliminary studies of traditional agriculture in Eastern Nigeria.
III
Umti Lcle: Designing rural development programmes: lessons from past exper-
ience in Africa.
T. Scarlett Epstcin: Extract from Capitalism, Primitive and Modern: Some
Aspects of Tolai Economic Growth.
D. H. Penny and Masri Singarimbun: Economic activity among the Karo
Batak of Indonesia.
Dominique Gentil: The establishment of a new co-operative system in Niger.
James Gordon: The role of the church in rural development work of the
Christian Service Committee in Northern Ghana.
Philip M. Mbithi: The role of voluntary agencies in rural and agricultural
development in Kenya.
Ros Dean and Adrian Moyes: Integrated rural development programmes,
Ghimaltenango, Guatemala.

37
 IMPLEMENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

William M. Dyal, Jr.: Assisting agricultural change in Latin America and the
Caribbean.
/. M. Texier: The promotion of co-operatives in traditional rural societies.
B. J. Youngjohns: Co-operative organisation.
Goran Hyden: Co-operatives as a means of farmer grouping in East Africa:
expectations and actual performance.
Gary E. Hansen: Agricultural Institutions in Indonesia.
T. H. Shen: Farmer Associations in Taiwan.
Gelia T. Castillo: Agricultural Extension Services and the Filipino rice farmer.
John Higgs: Extension in Latin America, with special reference to Ecuador
and Paraguay.
E. Bortei-Doku: Communication the potential bottleneck to agricultural
change.
Ronald Watts: The testing of innovations under peasant farming conditions
the Makerere Experimental Small-holdings, Uganda.
G. E. Jones and M. J. Rolls: Planning extension programmes to suit local
environments.
A. U. Patel, Q. B. O. Anthonio and L. F. Miller: Institutional and administra-
tive constraints in agricultural development at village level in the Western
and Kwara States of Nigeria.
C. A. Osuntogun: Institutional Determinants and Constraints on Agricultural
Development (Nigeria).
T. Griffith-Jones: Experience in initiating agricultural change.
K. Subramanyam: Some experiences with agricultural extension and administra-
tion in India.
IV
F. A. Wilson: The structure and organisation of the internal market for fruit
and vegetables in Kenya.
Peter Stutley: Government intervention in agricultural marketing.
M. F. Chen: The organisation of input supplies and agricultural marketing in
mainland China.
Barbara Harriss: Effect of fertiliser scarcities in Tamil Nadu.
Barbara Harriss: The effects of the paddy-rice levy on free market prices in
Tamil Nadu.
Gavin Green: Marketing Co-operatives in East Africa: the commercial
function and management.
T. A. Phillips and M. P. Collinson: The organisation and development of
smallholder schemes in the programmes of the Commonwealth Development
Corporation.
K. Padmanabhaiah: Development of the sugar Co-operative movement in
Maharashtra.
Ttinku Mansur Yacoob: Land development and settlement, as carried out by
the Federal Land Development Authority (FLDA).
R. K. Thakar: Warana dairy project an integrated programme of intensive
dairy development on Co-operative lines.
Waheeduddin Khan: Management systems for agricultural development two
case studies. (From Serving the Small Farmer: Policy Choices in Indian Agri-
culture, ed. Guy Hunter and A. F. Bottrall).
7. C. Abbott: Devising viable credit systems for traditional and small scale
livestock farmers.
F. A. Wilson: Commercial banks and farmer finance a Zambia case study.
/. D. von Pischke: A penny saved . . .: problems and opportunities in Kenya's
co-operative savings scheme.

38
 LIST OF PAPERS

A. F. Bottrall: Financing small farmers: a range of strategies.

D. J. Halliday: An industry view of the FAO fertiliser programme.
Cadwaladr J. Lewis: Pesticides in India a product and market development
project.
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