Strengthening capacity for effective smallholder farmers support through university, research and government partnership

There is general consensus that the linear prescriptive model of technology generation and transfer from researchers to farmers often through extension has failed to deliver expected outcomes. Past approaches to agricultural research and development, the “linear model” and subsequent models had a design flaw in focussing on the supply of new knowledge from research to farmers; rather than providing a mechanism for nurturing the innovative capacity of multi-stakeholders to address recurrent production challenges in complex farming systems. These approaches tend to be sectorial and fragmented with little or no involvement of relevant stakeholders. The Agricultural Research Council (ARC) partnered with the Universities of Limpopo (UL), Venda (Univern) and Fort Hare (UFH) and applied International Centre for Development Oriented Research in Agriculture- ICRA’s Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) approach to enhance the impacts of their research and thus stimulate the agricultural production performance of the rural communities they serve. This presented an opportunity to address complex issues that require participation and contributions from a range of stakeholders. The capacity to conduct participatory action research has been gained through actual exposure of IAR4D teams to real-world challenges and by engaging in processes of interactive learning and collective action. The ARD teams were composed of staff of universities, ARC, government, and students as there is realisation that both staff and students lack competencies to effectively make effective changes required for a more inclusive economic development and transformation in South Africa. Success was particularly realized in exposing trained staff and students to a different way of doing research that provides opportunity for better engagement with communities and other relevant stakeholders. However, there has been low ‘adoption rate’ of the ARD processes. as none of the partner universities structurally and wholly integrated the approach in their research agenda to date. Whilst there are pockets of adoption, structural change is yet to be seen at UL, UFH and UniVen.