Technology and rural development strategies in a small farmer organization: lessons from Bolivia for rural policy and practice
| Author | JAVIER QUISBERT,ANTHONY BEBBINGTON,GERMAN TRUJILLO |
| Published date | 01 August 1996 |
| Date | 01 August 1996 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-162X(199608)16:3<195::AID-PAD879>3.0.CO;2-2 |
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT,
VOL.
16, 195-213 (1996)
Technology and rural development strategies in a small farmer
organization: lessons from Bolivia for rural policy and practice
ANTHONY BEBBINGTON
University
of
Colorado
JAVIER QUISBERT
Centro
de Estudios
y
Proyectos, Bolivia
and
GERMAN TRUJILLO
El
Ceibo. Bolivia
SUMMARY
At a time when public sector agricultural and rural development administration is changing
quite profoundly, and when farmer organizations are being asked to assume more significant
roles in rural and agricultural development, in-depth analysis of these organizations is an
important input into policy and programmatic discussions. This article is an analysis of one
type of small farmer organization, a regional economic organization called El Ceibo in
Bolivia. It is one of the most successful cases of small farmer organization around technology
generation and product transformation and marketing in the Andes. El Ceibo has been able to
open new markets for its products, adapt product transformation techniques appropriate for
these markets, and develop technology in support of its marketing strategy. Factors favouring
Ceibo’s success include long-term financial and technical support from external agencies,
isolated location, and a cash/export crop specialization. The impacts of Ceibo are significant,
although it is not clear how far Ceibo’s activities foster a more broadly based regional
development in the Alto Beni area. The article also compares the strategies and impacts of
economically based organizations such as El Ceibo with those of more traditional,
representative and politically oriented small farmer organizations.
FARMER ORGANIZATIONS, AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY
DEVELOPMENT AND RURAL INTENSIFICATION
Although disappointing experiences with cooperative and community development
in earlier decades had led to disillusionment about the capacities of rural peoples’
organizations, recent years have again witnessed a growth in donor and policy-
maker interest in the potential roles
of
farmer organizations in rural development
Anthony Bebbington is at the Department
of
Geography and Institute
of
Behavioural Sciences, University
of Colorado, Boulder,
USA.
Javier Quisbert is at the Centro de Estudios
y
Proyectos, La Paz, Bolivia.
German Trujillo is at
El
Ceibo, Sapecho, Bolivia.
CCC 0271-2075/96/030195-19
0
1996 by John Wiley
&
Sons, Ltd.
196
A.
Bebbington
et al.
(Collion, 1995; Arnaiz
et
al.,
1995; Bingen
et
al.,
1995). However, this interest has
been based on as yet relatively limited in-depth understanding of the diversity of such
organizations, or of how they operate and have evolved over time. Such
understanding is critical if we are to understand better how to work with such
organizations. In order to cast light on partial answers to these questions, this article
reviews one case of a successful small farmer (or
campesino)
organization in Bolivia.
Farmer organizations, agricultural technology and rural livelihoods
With the progressive reorganization of public sector services for the development of
agricultural technologies (Farrington and Bebbington, 1993), donor agencies and
governments have looked for new partners to support the process of generating
appropriate technologies for small farmers. In some cases this has primarily been
a
search for partners to
fill
gaps left by a shrinking public sector, and in other cases it
has been a genuine search for institutional relationships that might make research
and extension more responsive to demands from small farmers and their
organizations (Merrill-Sands and Kaimowitz, 1990; Kaimowitz, 1992).
It has been suggested that if there were closer links between government and
farmers’ organizations, then these organizations might be able to influence the
research agenda, to engage in the adaptation of technologies to local conditions, to
link with extension services, and to finance some of the costs of research themselves
(Merrill-Sands and Collion, 1994). On the other hand, strong organizations are few
in number, others lack capacity, and many might serve only the special interests of
their members (Carroll, 1992; Gubbels, 1993).
However, it is questionable that technology development per se will be sufficient to
intensify rural livelihoods. Where intensification has occurred in areas of small
farmer production, access to markets, secure land tenure, infrastructure, provision of
credit and other support services have played as important a role as appropriate
agricultural technology (Turner
et
af.,
1993).
The question-particularly at a time of public sector reform-is ‘what types of
institution’, or what institutional combinations might help provide this mix of
services, develop these more favourable market linkages, and negotiate with other
institutions in order to help support such processes of livelihood intensification. This
article reviews one case where a small farmer federation has played such a role,
allowing
us
to draw lessons regarding the conditions of external support,
institutional coordination, and economic context under which this may occur
elsewhere.
Distinguishing among small farmer organizations
In any discussions of the roles that small farmer organizations might play, it is
important to distinguish among different types of organization. Two distinctions are
especially relevant-one of scale, one of broad function.
Farmer organizations exist from the national to the community levels. It might be
hypothesized that national organizations are too centralized to play significant roles
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