Technology Suitable for Farming
cultivating seeds
of hope amongst poor farmers
What's in a name?
Cultivating seeds of hope amongst poor farmers is the goal of our agricultural team.
Teknologi Pantas Tani, in the Indonesian
language, literally means 'technology suitable for farming'. The word 'tepat'
is usually used to translate the word 'appropriate', as in
'appropriate technology'.
Great work has
already been done throughout
the developing world to dramatically increase agricultural yields but
often the fruits of this work are not felt by the sort of farmers with
whom we work. Working shoulder-to-shoulder with poor farmers in their
own villages (many of whom are share-croppers or labouring peasants), it
quickly becomes clear that what works on expansive test plots - where water is
plentiful and money readily available - or on large scale commercial
enterprises, is often not practical for a single individual labouring over a
field the size of a home garden.
We in TEPAT believe that these farmers
should be able to benefit from just such innovations; and so, drawing on
a network of contacts both within Indonesia and from abroad, we are
seeking to find resources which can be brought to bear on our context -
utilising inputs which are both suitable and appropriate.
The Goal of Agricultural Development
To quote
from Roland Bunch in his book 'Two Ears of Corn' (also available in
the Indonesian language):
The goal of an agriculture programme should be, on the one hand, to
train and motivate the farmers to teach each other the
innovations introduced and, on the other, to teach them how to
improve on those innovations by themselves. Through a process
of small-scale experimentation, farmers can learn to develop and
adopt new technologies that will carry the production on to
steadily higher levels, and by learning to become high quality
teachers of these new technologies that can spread them
throughout the programme area. Five years after the programme is
closed production levels should be higher and improved production
more widespread than at the program's end..
In short, the goal should not be to develop
the people’s agriculture, but to teach them a process by
which they can develop their own agriculture (emphasis in the
original).
This is the
sort of philosophy under which we operate in TEPAT – all of our programmes attempt to include the
farmers in the process of experimentation, in an attempt to instill confidence
in their ability to risk new efforts even after TEPAT staff have moved
on.
