Agricultural research often aims to reduce productivity constraints by focusing on individual farm components (livestock, crops, soil or trees). There is a strong argument for emphasising how each discipline can contribute to reversing system-wide problems, such as declining soil nutrients or water supplies.

Researchers must move beyond the traditional emphasis on increasing agricultural productivity within their respective fields to consider how maximising yields in their area of interest affects soil, water and the productivity of other enterprises. They also must look at the entire farm and landscape to understand whether current negative trends may be reversed by simply changing current land use practice, or whether wider policy interventions are required.

The Agricultural Research and Extension Network, UK, outlines an integrated research approach. Focusing on a watershed in Ethiopia, researchers developed an approach to understand how research within a single discipline (agroforestry) can contribute to reversing nutrient degradation at farm and landscape level.  

Actions taken within a single enterprise or component (trees) affect the rest of the system. Trees affect:

• soil fertility through the decomposition of leaf litter and the substitution of dung with wood for fuel
• crop productivity through soil fertility improvements and the opportunity to leave crop residues in place, rather than use them as fuel
• livestock productivity, depending on whether the selected species produces leaves that are edible for livestock
• water discharge from springs, depending on which trees are planted and where. 

Reversing nutrient depletion requires not only technological research (for example which trees can be planted and where), but research on the ability of a system to absorb the degree of change required to reverse nutrient loss. Understanding how many trees are needed requires biophysical research; understanding the ability of households to implement these changes requires social science research. 

Policymakers previously assumed that technology alone can reverse negative trends in farming systems and natural resource degradation. This new approach illustrates how analysing systems from social and biophysical viewpoints complements technological innovation, local negotiations and policy support. Research institutes must significantly alter their practices to meet this changing demand for inter-disciplinary agricultural research and research-policy linkages:

• Agricultural research organisations need funding and policy support to expand their mandates for interdisciplinary research and analysis of whole systems.
• They will also need training and expertise to incorporate new disciplinary perspectives, such as social science and systems ecology, with which they may not be familiar.
• Research must change its focus from ‘desired change’ to what can actually be achieved under existing conditions.
• Researchers must work with policymakers to develop alternative strategies for developments that cannot be achieved through technology alone.
• Research institutions must modify their planning and evaluation procedures, research design (from component to system objectives) and structures (from disciplinary to interdisciplinary programs) to support systems-oriented research at farm and landscape levels.

Agricultural research has an important role to play in moving beyond specialised disciplines to balance production with natural resource management and to understand the limits to (of?) local-level innovation. This will strengthen the influence of research on policy by highlighting what local-level actions can achieve and what requires larger scale (regional or national) policies to reverse poverty and natural resource degradation.

Source(s):
‘Watershed management to counter farming systems decline: toward a demand-driven, systems-oriented research agenda’, AgREN Network Paper No. 145, by Laura A. German, Berhane Kidane and Kindu Mekonnen, July 2005 Full document.

Funded by: UK Department for International Development (DFID)

id21 Research Highlight: 9 February 2006

Further Information:
Laura German
African Highlands Initiative
PO Box 26416
Kampala
Uganda

Tel: +256 41 220602
Fax: +256 41 223242
Contact the contributor: L.German@cgiar.org

Agricultural Research and Extension Network, UK

Berhane Kidane
Forestry Research Division
Holetta Agricultural Research Centre
c/o EARO
PO Box 2003
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia

Tel: +291 1 370300
Fax: +291 1 370377
Contact the contributor: Berhanekid19@yahoo.com

Kindu Mekonnen
Institute of Forest Ecology
University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences
Vienna
Austria

Tel: +43 1 47654 4117
Fax: +43 1 4797896
Contact the contributor: kindumeko@yahoo.com

Other related links:
'Men, women and water – how can a community improve their water supply?'

'‘Participation’ in natural resources management: time to research research?'

'Agricultural extension: prioritising farmers’ needs'

'Protecting forests for water management'

'Watershed management and poverty – time for a rethink?'