This section also discusses effective farmer’s learning contexts or knowledge interaction environments that are effective under farmer’s evaluation, which is often taken for granted by external development and knowledge professionals in their knowledge exchange undertakings.
Farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing patterns
Our farmers’ interviews reveal a number of cases in which farmers through their informal and formal interactions with academics have learned and applied new technical knowledge and farming models. Such applications have brought higher productivity and income and lifted them out of previous economic difficulties.
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Residing desultorily and working unconnectedly in rural communities, these first adopters often focus and become proficient through on-field practice in their one specific area of agricultural production, for example frog rearing, seed rice production, papaya planting, or watermelon farming. As their work is not always known by the local authorities and extension officials whose interests are greatly intended to project-based demonstration farmers under current promotions or campaigns, their expertise is likely to be mainly shared with within-community or same-farming-model farmers who get to know and visit them. It is often true that knowledge sharing of this kind is quite limited in terms of number of followers and area of knowledge transmission; for example in the above case of the seed rice farmer, he has exchanged new production techniques with five to six neighbouring households, while large apprentices from many provinces in the delta can however be observed in high-economic value models such as frog raising. There are four major farmer-to-farmer knowledge-sharing patterns from our analysis:
Non-sharing: Non-sharing does not simply mean the absence of knowledge sharing, because the absence of knowledge can lead to the absence of knowledge sharing. Non-sharing includes but is not limited to knowledge hiding which is referred to attempts to withhold or conceal knowledge when requested, such as playing dumb, rationalised hiding and evasive hiding (Connelly et al. 2012).
Non-sharing implies the absence of knowledge sharing action in spite of the availability of knowledge.
Partial sharing: An incomplete amount of knowledge is shared because of the level of willingness to share, capacity to share, and the nature and complexity of knowledge itself (as discussed in Chapter Three).
Conditional sharing: Knowledge is shared with or in certain conditions or contexts, for example within a friendship circle.
Full sharing: Complete knowledge sharing is done through information provision and direct process-long training. This covers the cases when farmers do not see more producers as competitors, have alternative income sources, training is paid as per agreement, knowledge sharing is encouraged through training courses and teaching material preparation (e.g., SOFRI fruit farmers), or they feel a need to help other farmers (because they are also farmers or because they have been supported by academics and it is their turn now to help further their community), such as the frog- raising farmer in Chapter Four.
Table 6.2 below illustrates the types of knowledge sharing among farmers in the Mekong Delta. The quotes are extracted from longer interviews with farmers conducted in Can Tho and Vinh Long between October 2010 and March 2011.
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In general, non-sharing among Mekong Delta farmers happens when knowledge becomes a trade secret or should be kept secret, as in the case of pesticide use. The main reason for non-sharing among farmers in the Mekong Delta is the menace of declining market share with the numerical growth of producers. For example, a papaya farmer from Can Tho in consideration of this threat does not want to tell or teach (even with the suggested payment of a high fee) anyone about his successful production. A local commune agricultural official commented:
Farmers like him (the papaya farmer) are selfish in exchanging knowledge because they do not want others to have better results than they do and get better market access. Another factor is the community spirit. In a community where farmers are active and interactive in community work, they organise joint efforts for road construction and economic development activities. Knowledge is also better shared among farmers in such a community (Interview 203, commune agriculture official, male, Can Tho, 26.10.2010).
The main reason for partial knowledge sharing among farmers in the Mekong Delta is their unsophisticated capacity of knowledge integration and expression. Meanwhile full sharing is related with farmers intensively engaged in learning and training environments, making knowledge sharing a motivation and task of theirs.
The typical pattern is contextualised knowledge sharing. Farmers share knowledge within their kinship, neighbourhood and friendship circles. The size of a farmer’s social network also determines his/her knowledge- sharing scope. Knowledge and development professionals should therefore promote and support farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing and learning environments and networking activities (see next Section).
Table 6.2: Types of knowledge sharing among farmers in the Mekong Delta Knowledge
sharing
pattern Do you share agricultural technology and knowledge with other farmers? Farmer’s interview code
When I do not understand something, I frequently ask my neighbour. He knows quite a lot about the issues but always faces difficulties in enunciating his ideas. He only can tell us what he remembers. It does not mean that he is not enthusiastic in providing me with advice but he just cannot tell it out in a complete and corporeal manner, which makes my application less effective. I reckon similar cases are many.
161, Vinh Thanh, 13.10.2010
Other farmers sometimes don’t answer my questions. For example, my inquiries of food processing have been answered perfunctorily. I have asked an animal engineer who is working for Mr. Dung, he also told me very little about it. But finally I found my own way to do food processing and it helped my pigs gain weight.
164, Vinh Thanh, 13.10.2010
In general, farmers do share knowledge with each other. Usually, people in my village who are not as successful as me don’t want to share knowledge with me. Although they may dislike me, I treat them as good as I can. Only my close friends and relatives have offered me with detailed instructions as needed, not the neighbours even though they’re kind-hearted persons. Sometimes I have to go the agrichemical store to ask and they also provide me with good guidance. They also give me related booklets to learn. In training courses participants discuss enthusiastically. After that they visit each other to learn their models and go drinking together. We discover from this model to another.
167, Vinh Thanh, 14.10.2010
Knowledge sharing among farmers must rely on their practical experiences. 168, Vinh Thanh,
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14.10.2010
Many farmers hide their experience and knowledge. They don’t tell which kind of effective pesticides they are using. Agrichemical companies and stores instruct me when I come to ask them.
They give me leaflets to read at home too.
169, Vinh Thanh, 14.10.2010
I’ve been in many cases that other farmers don’t want to share. For example, they told me that they cannot tell anything about rice planting theoretically; learning must be done through doing.
Some people tell me about some techniques but actually they are not like that. Rice growers like medical practitioners tend to hide knowledge. If someone is enthusiastic, s/he will instruct you carefully; if not s/he will hide it because s/he’s afraid your crop is more productive than his/hers.
172, Vinh Thanh, 15.10.2010
I don’t hide anything. I share knowledge with anyone who are interested or in need. But I am not sure whether they follow my instructions. There are many farmers who are more skilful than me.
172, Vinh Thanh, 15.10.2010
Farmers don’t hide rice planting technique. However they hide knowledge about pesticides or techniques in cash crop cultivation because it is more difficult to do. Sometimes they share, but only partially. Until our outcomes are not good as expected that we know they didn’t share all. Sesame is easier to cultivate. I am often instructed by Chinh, whose field is next to mine, about some kinds of pesticides every morning when we meet in the field or at a coffee shop.
173, Vinh Thanh, 15.10.2010
Farmers don’t hide their knowledge; maybe they don’t express their knowledge completely.
For farmers, it’s really awkward to hide their knowledge with acquaintances. Farmers exchange experience and technique together, one uses this expensive pesticides, another may use different or cheaper ones; it depends on their affordability and personal choice. One may accept to spend more labour and time to spray twice by using cheaper pesticides; meanwhile others want to spray one time only by using expensive ones. Farmer doesn’t hide anything. They are happy when having a bumper crop. Farmer competes fairly, not like merchants. If everybody has a bumper crop, we all still can sell our products. If someone can sell his products, it doesn’t impact the other one’s sale. Therefore, farmers have a fair and happy competition. For business, because there are hundreds of sellers while buyers are small in number, the competition is tougher. An example of competition in farmers is that farmers with more money can keep their rice in store while the ones with less money will sell it first.
174, Thot Not, 18.10.2010
When seeing each other, we just exchange greetings rather than sharing information.
Generally, everybody is busy working all day and we have little time talking to each other.
183, Thot Not, 21.10.2010
Some share all information and knowledge with me; some share partially whereas others tend
to keep knowledge for themselves only. We close friends share knowledge in all sincerity. 185, Thot Not, 21.10.2010
Throughout my working, I gain experience. I share knowledge with those I trust. With strangers, I dare not share or advise them because I could not take responsibilities if something goes wrong. For my friends, in case they get any diseases, we can share information on treatment methods. I will not share experience with strangers.
188, Thot Not, 22.10.2010
If someone has a successful rice crop, they share experience with me. However, they will not share fish farming information since they are afraid that we could not gain a similar success, for example, what if we apply their shared treatment method on our infected fishes and things still get worse. Every fish is different, every disease is different too.
190, Thot Not, 22.10.2010
Farmers rarely ask information in a thorough way. I make careful guidance when being asked.
Some farmers tend to hide their knowledge with peers, yet, they enthusiastically share it with extension workers.
197, Thot Not, 23.10.2010
In agricultural production, they just share knowledge in an honest way with those they like and sometimes the vice versa is true. We work, gain information and share knowledge with friends in group meetings. Some people just share information when they want to. Some people are good at production skills, yet, they are not willing and enthusiastic to share. People tend to succeed if they make a good progress record of their crop. Sometimes, I could not recall the whole process to figure out why my last crop is not successful.
199, Co Do, 25.10.2010
We usually motivate each other. When someone is successful, s/he encourages his/her friends
and relatives to follow. 200, Co Do
25.10.2010
Leaders of the co-operative and village often visit the fields and share knowledge with farmers.
For example, once a leader came to my field and saw that my pesticides did not work, he told me to 205, Thoi Lai, 27.10.2010
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visit a neighbour’s field which was more effective and tried using that type of pesticide. We support each other; leaders visit our fields frequently.
I feel uneasy when I succeed whereas my surrounding people do not. Thus, I share everything I find useful with other farmers.
215, Thoi Lai, 29.10.2010
If someone is interested in learning, I am willing to share. My sharing should be made upon request. I could not go around and share knowledge with everyone.
271, Cai Rang, 2.12.2010
People do not hide; they are always willing to share. In this hamlet, we often have meetings.
Actually, we have a club.
328, Tri Ton, 13.01.2011
In anniversaries or parties, I share all knowledge when being asked. 313, Tam Binh, 9.3.2011
We share knowledge among farmers during informal talks. Yet, I could not make presentation on production process to public. Maybe I am good at one stage or two. I have succeeded in one crop, yet failed in another one. I am not confident that I am good and right at every stages of my production process. Thus, I find it difficult to consult others.
342, Co Do, 17.3.2011
Notes: Non sharing Partial sharing Conditional sharing Full sharing The sharp S curse
The ideas of new knowledge and technology diffusion in the agricultural and rural development sector in Vietnam in general and in the Mekong Delta are mainly built on Rogers’s ([1962] 2003) innovation diffusion S curve model62 in which an innovation is transmitted through certain channels over time (through knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation processes) among the members of a social system in an adoption order of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards:
(1) Innovators who are characterised to be venturesome and risk tolerant are the first individuals to adopt an innovation. Despite their cosmopolite position, they play the gatekeeper role to import outside innovations into the system. (2) Early adopters are the second fastest group that adopts an innovation. More integrated to the local social system and respected by their peers for judicious decision-making, early adopters as role models reduce adoption uncertainty by adopting an innovation and trigger the critical mass through interpersonal connection. (3) Early majority comes next despite deliberating for some time but with the most numerous adopters. They are an important link between the very early and relatively late adopter categories in the diffusion process but seldom hold the position of opinion leadership within the system. (4) Late majority with the same member size as the early majority category adopts an innovation after the average member of the society. They approach an innovation with a high degree of scepticism under the pressure of relatively scare resources. (5) Laggards are the last to adopt an innovation because of their limited resources and limited network of traditional values. Many of them are isolated from the social networks of their system. (Rogers 2003, 282-285)
The model is indeed applicable to explain varied adoption of agricultural innovations that are motivated by productivity and income increase and facilitated through social learning. Innovations here are considered as perfected final product or a method ready to be applied, though they are not: knowledge localisation or innovation reinvention happens in most cases. Innovations in particular are the input of another production process determined by other resource and market factors. Driven by short-term observable
62 Rogers (2003, 281) goes far to suggest the percentage of each innovation adopter category, making the adoption S- curve: innovators: 2.5%, early adopters: 13.5%, early majority: 34%, late majority: 34%, and laggard: 16%.
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economic benefits, such kinds of adoption do not need much propaganda endeavours by public and private professional agencies. Still, such new technologies are dramatically widespread over time in the farming communities, reaching the critical mass and also including laggards. The role of innovators and early adopters is outstripped by highly extrinsically motivated mass to adopt the innovation:
Before 1986, the majority of the Mekong Delta farmers grew flooding rice (lua mua), a kind of local rice grown during the rising water season with long strands of straw but low yield production.
Therefore, farmers had to cultivate rice in a large area to meet their household food needs, whereas increasing pests and diseases drove many households into hunger. From 1988, high-yield rice varieties, e.g., than nong, were widely introduced with inception from state-farm areas. Only after two or three crops, such new varieties became prominent in Mekong Delta fields (Interview 134, male, farmer, Co Do, Can Tho, 8.9.2010; Interview 133, male, senior staff of Co Do Farm Company, 8.9.2010).
Other examples can be turbulent production development of pangasius hypophthalmus (ca tra) and fruit trees. Cultivating pangasius from natural seeding has developed for long time in Mekong Delta household farms. Recent research-based innovations of pangasius hatching and large-scale farming have strongly impelled industrial pangasius farming. Besides training courses organised for farmers by fishery extension professionals, transmission and adoption of such innovations are implemented through informal networks. Many households get loans from banks and relatives to prepare ponds and cultivate fish. Many seed provision stores spring up like mushroom, and fishery food and chemical shops open. In only a few years, the pangasius cultivation industry has been dramatically magnified with the development of processing factories and Vietnam has become one of the biggest pangasius exporters in the world. However, with recent quality pressures by the international market and environmental problems, pangasius cultivation by good practices is promoted that makes many farmers suspend their pond (treo ho) and take on a debt burden. Such unplanned rapid development can be observed in fruit tree planting. At the beginning, a few households in a community plant some kinds of fruit trees such plum or longan and they sell their products at high prices. Later, other households in the community cut down their old trees in gardens and plant such fruit trees.
Production techniques are based on personal experiences or sharing among local farmers. Very observable results after one or two crops is that pest and diseases break out and prices go down so many farmers are ordered to cut down their trees and find another kind of tree. The refrain “planting, cutting down, cutting down, and planting” (trong, chat, chat, trong) keeps repeating. Local farmers often remind each other: “The production of pangasius first fails, now followed by Hong Phuoc Malay apple (Syzygium malaccense)” (ca tra di truoc, man Hong Phuoc theo sau).
Distinguishing different innovation adopters is useful in suggesting that it is useless to convince the innovation adoption of the masses in a social system in a quick manner. However, it is dangerous to view innovation adoption processes out of knowledge and power inequity relations, leading to the nạve belief that opinion leadership can be created through resource concentration on early adopters to build models.
In the context of insufficient human and financial allocation for agricultural knowledge diffusion in Vietnam, the model is misinterpreted and partly applied by diffusion professionals in the way that only model farmers are benefited. In cases where new innovation is expeditiously grasped and adopted under the economic motivation – creating the vertically sharp S curse, the knowledge professional’s role of innovation orientation and knowledge supplementation and is significantly crucial to the farming community. It is high time that the extension system develops qualified consultation staff to meet the knowledge requirements of quickly commercialised and large-scale agricultural production in the Mekong Delta.
195 Creation of learning contexts
In a specific learning event, learners are engaged in activities involving content, both explicit and tacit knowledge and context, the set of circumstances relevant for learners to build knowledge (cf. Figueiredo 2005). Learning context is not restricted to the learner’s environment with a clear-cut location and delimitation, such as a classroom. The constructivist view that context is the interaction’s knowledge (Figueiredo 2005) allows inclusion of pervasive leaning environments such as communities of practice. In this sense, the concept comes close to Ikujiro Nonaka’s conceptualisation of ba, the enabling context of knowledge creation:
“ […] knowledge does not just exist in one’s cognition, rather, it’s created in situated actions. Ba offer a context and is defined as a shared context in motion, in which knowledge is shared, created and utilised, ba is a place where information is given meaning through interpretation to become knowledge, and new knowledge is created out of existing knowledge through the change of meanings and contexts. […] ba can emerge in individuals, working groups, project teams, informal circles, temporary meetings, virtual space, such as e-mail groups, and at the front line contact with the customer” (Nonaka and Toyama 2002, 1001).
The default learning context between knowledge and development professionals and farming communities is the classroom format with the prominent teaching role of the trainers and one-way knowledge communication. The aggrandizement of content delivery has forced a number of contextualised training initiatives in agricultural extension, such as on-field workshops or farmer’s field schools, to wither in accordance with professional’s losing interests due to funding or project termination (as discussed in detail in Chapters Three and Four). At the same time, farmer-led networks and communities of practice are widely neglected from the formal development agendas (see Section 6.5 for detailed cases).
Our FGDs point out that there are two imperative knowledge communication contexts that may be culturally distinctive to the Mekong Delta farmers, but are often neglected by agricultural professionals:
early morning coffee and family anniversary and festive parties (dam tiec). Coffee shops can be found easily almost everywhere in the Mekong Delta. It is a public meeting place of farmers during their early morning coffee. Early morning coffee takes place from 5:00 to 6:30 AM before farmers go back home to feed their fish or to work on their rice fields. The farmers automatically arrange themselves into clusters of specific agricultural topics or join together in a big group:
Farmers usually gather at local coffee shops to discuss all problems related to agricultural production.
They share useful farming information with each other (Interview 174, farmer, male, Thot Not, 18.10.2010).
Local farmers enjoy coffee in specific clusters of agricultural activities every morning. Those who raise fish join in a group and talk about fish farming and the group of gardening farmers shares their stories together. Coffee shops have become the most popular and convenient place for knowledge dissemination. Market prices of agricultural products are quickly articulated here. For farmers, communicative learning at a coffee shop is much more effective than reading a newspaper or book (Interview 237, Farmer’s Association senior, male, O Mon, 9.11.2010).