Abstract
Studies of local knowledge and farmer participatory research tend to focus on raising crops and livestock. Little attention is given to processing and marketing farm products, an important source of income for rural households, particularly women.
This article presents the case of an investigation into processing and marketing of milk products by agropastoral Fulani women, which revealed how the women under stand local market forces and recognize important social and even local political functions of their marketing activities. However, it also revealed the limits of their knowledge about how the local economy interlinks with national and international economies.
Reasons are examined why the study did not lead to local technical and institutional development in dairying. Differentiation is made between two types of research: “extractive” research to provide information for development planners and academics; and participatory or “enriching” research, in which data collection, analysis, and reporting are done with rural people, to use in their own problem-solving. It is argued that “enriching” research should be aimed at increasing rural people's present knowledge, so that they can better understand and cope with external influences on their activities. They could then better defend their own interests against the macroplanning State.
Finally, the ethics of documenting the research results are questioned. Documentation of conventional research is primarily for empowerment and enrichment of the extractive economic and academic systems. But there is also a danger that wider dissemination of results of participatory research and local knowledge will not benefit the rural participants but rather strengthen the information base of planners, so that they can better manipulate local economies.
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Additional information
This is a revised version of an invited discussion paper prepared for the IIED/IDS Workshop “Beyond Farmer First: Rural People's Knowledge, Agricultural Research and Extension Practice“. 27–29 October, 1992, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK.
Since 1989 Ann Waters-Bayer has been a consultant in rural sociology employed by ETC Foundation, PO Box 64, NL-3830 AB Leusden, Netherlands. She is also a staff member of the ETC-implemented project Information Centre for Low-External-Input and Sustainable Agriculture (ILEIA). Born in 1949 in Winnipeg, Canada, and now resident in Göttingen, Germany, she holds a doctorate in agriculture from the University of Hohenheim, Germany, following studies in rural development in Berlin and in agricultural economics in Armidale, Australia. This article is based on her work from 1981–85 as socioeconomist with the Subhumid Zone Programme of the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA), based in Zonkwa, central Nigeria.
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Waters-Bayer, A. Studying pastoral women's knowledge in milk processing and marketing — for whose empowerment?. Agric Hum Values 11, 85–95 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01530449
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01530449