The call, atop this chapter, for a closed boundary of the systems definitely neglects the increasing trend of interaction and knowledge co-production practice among development actors as discussed in earlier passages. The increasingly important role of agribusinesses in agricultural and rural development in the Mekong Delta is further proved in terms of development and democratisation of knowledge. Old and new challenges the delta is facing goes beyond doing things better, or productionism led development. Doing new things is needed. There is a greater demand for localised and instrumental knowledge and innovation from novel seed varieties, farming techniques to systemic management of natural resources and pro-poor rural development (see Chapter Two). Agricultural entrepreneurship is no longer defined only within an increase of business size, but more importantly as Lans, Seuneke, and Klerkx (2013) argue, by competence in exploit entrepreneurial development opportunity in the broader working environment the entrepreneur engages in:
1. It does not limit the study of agricultural entrepreneurship to specific situations such as new venture creation (e.g., most of the agricultural businesses are already in existence for decades).
2. Learning and development are the heart of entrepreneurship: The fact that some farmers exploit entrepreneurial opportunities and others do not is not due to lack of certain personality traits, but due to (the lack) of specific competence, and experience.
3. It recognizes the importance of the broader working environment the entrepreneur engages in.
Interpretation, understanding and creativity, core processes in opportunity development process, all do not happen in isolation, but are influenced by, for instance, the farmer's wife, employees, competitors, network, and chain partners or extension services. (Lans, Seuneke, and Klerkx 2013)
Development of agricultural entrepreneurship in such an orientation encourages interaction between agricultural enterprises and other actors in knowledge diffusion, generation and legitimisation. Shifting from the production-driven association of the quadruple of the state, scientists, agribusinesses, and farmers to knowledge-based networking and partnership building is both a challenge and an opportunity when the tam nong program has recently been promoted to construct new rural development. Knowledge coproduction and learning spaces can be cultivated through participatory and transdisciplinary research.
Creation of dialogical channels engaging actors from different knowledge worlds should facilitate public discussion on complex issues where contested knowledge is communicated59. Such public debate can help
59 In our FGDs, we showed the farmers different concepts related to agricultural sustainable practices and asked for their definition and experience sharing. A wide range of concepts was discussed including row seeding, integrated farming systems, four spray principles, no early spray, three reductions and three gains (3R3G), one must and five reductions (1M5R), ecological engineering to good agricultural practices (GAP), VietGAP, and sustainable
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farmers to make decisions that are greater dependent on new knowledge acquisition as well as nourish knowledge management that includes the exploration of both the known and unknown in the more complex and uncertain context of rural development of the contemporary delta.
New agricultural entrepreneurship should emphasise the inclusive development of agricultural cooperatives and households businesses. Models like farmers’ friends developed by AGPPS should be further replicated. Locally-tailored knowledge development throughout this cooperation needs to be integrated in the knowledge diffusion management in both project and sector levels.
What is important to be highlighted here is that there is an emergence of hybrid agribusiness in the Mekong Delta. For example, large companies, such as Bianfishco, have established research institutes and centers that attract experts from different disciplines to joint problem solving of sustainable production and development60. Other examples include agri-chemical stores opened by those who have worked in the agricultural extension and management sector or seed farms and organic fertiliser enterprises managed by well-trained young agronomists who maintain a close connection with academics. Farmers also formulate
development. Such practices have developed and evolved from both external knowledge imposition and locally adapted and generated knowledge. Local farmers are basically aware of the concepts although the understanding and application are partially restricted. We continued with consolidation of the common understanding of each concept within the FGD and drew lines of connection between such concepts. By so doing, a network of concepts and practices appeared clearly to the farmers that they had never discovered. The network has in turn asserted a significant role of adopting a single technique or practice. Also, knowledge that used to be applied in rice crops now could be usefully linked to fruit, vegetable and aquaculture production. After the session, many participants approached us with happiness and expressed a wish to have further “training sessions” like this in the future. Such exercise demonstrates the significance of knowledge colligation in the context of rich diverse and even conflicting knowledge diffused. This task has been ignored by agricultural extension and education professionals who mainly work on a specialised technology project. Colligated knowledge produced with farmers can help them not only overcome learning for action barriers but also generate prerequisite-critical knowledge when researching “the conditions for and limitations of knowledge”. It is highlighted that in the course of concentrated introduction and diffusion of new knowledge and technologies to rural communities in the Mekong Delta, even with novel approaches, it is equally important that agricultural extension and education professionals frequently “step back” and tackle, with farmers, conflicts and unassociated abundance of knowledge that farmers encounter. Such criticism and reconstruction of farmer’s present understanding and practice of “old” knowledge can help solve learning stuckness, consolidate practical application and create new knowledge as well. As a knowledge management implication, conflicted and colligated knowledge should be managed within cycles of new knowledge generation.
60 Binh An Fisheries Research Institute (Bianfishin) is the first fisheries private research institute in Vietnam. It is founded in end July 2010 from the single budget contribution from Binh An Seafood Company (Bianfishco). Its scientific council includes 22 members who are former (deputy) ministers of fisheries, science and technology, and agriculture and rural development and top scientists and experts in related fields from all over the country. With such a convergence of high-level human resource plus a flexible financial mechanism and production-oriented research, the institute is aimed to bring about a new science and technology driving force of sustainable aquaculture development in the Mekong Delta and Vietnam.
“The institute enjoyed more advantages in comparison with the public institutes, because it is closely linked with production. Bianfishin should speed up research and services for Bianfishin itself and other companies as a way to develop itself in a sustainable manner. Especially, the institute should carry out researches of extraction and refinery technologies for high-value substances from Pangasius by products.” (Phuong Chi 2010)
It is also the intention of the institute council that a Fisheries Academy can be established in cooperation with Can Tho University. The academy can provide interdisciplinary applied research and advanced programs for lecturers and practitioners in the field.
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groups and cultivate networks/communities of practice involving experts in the fields and farmers across the delta (see Chapter Six). These forms of hybrid agribusiness should be cultivated and harnessed as agents for change toward inclusive markets and agricultural entrepreneurship development.
Summing up
Analysing multiple cases of knowledge transfer by agribusinesses, especially “farmer’s friend” forces, this chapter reaffirms that the private sector through its advantages of most up-to-date technology localisation, wide networks and effective communications with farmers affords one of the most crucial knowledge sources of farming communities. More significantly, our findings reveal contested knowledge areas where agribusinesses in the name of agricultural extension have extended messages which are sales-supported, oversimplified and contradictory to recently-introduced sustainable development principles and efforts in the region. Project-bounded models and farming contract breaches have also challenged farmers’ new knowledge adoption and their trust in public-private partnership for alternative agricultural development.
The chapter suggests that knowledge-based interaction among actors is crucial not only to successful knowledge diffusion but also conflicting knowledge communication and management. Hybridised organisations such as private company’s research centers or transdisciplinary research should be supported and promoted as a new foundation for agricultural entrepreneurship development. A long-term pursuit of sustainable agricultural development in the Mekong Delta needs to be grounded on another epistemic culture that enhances interactive learning between the state-university-industry triple helix and rural communities.
173 CHAPTER SIX
BEYOND THE RECIPIENT’S MODUS OPERANDI: FARMERS AS KNOWLEDGE BROKERS AND GENERATORS
When farmer’s interests are strengthened, people might be self-motivated to be a farmer and pursue formal education to obtain a “farmer practitioner certificate”.
Things would be completely different from the current situation where any real estate or agricultural materials agents can hold farmers in the lowest regard; everyone is entitled to and can easily become a farmer (Dang Kim Son 2012 cited in Huynh Phan 2012, TuanVietnam.net April 12, 2012).
This extract is part of a vivid image of Vietnam’s agricultural and rural development future held by the head of the national agricultural strategic policy institute. Whether or not it is merely the dream of the director or the beginning of new agricultural strategies, its profound understanding of development lies at the advocated change in the farming profession per se. Farmers have been recently recognised as the subject (chu the) of rural development in Vietnam, as for example under the tam nong policies. Yet the failed definition of the subject’s capacity, function, and support mechanism has rendered this bold policy ambiguous in this time of economic crisis because of its rural infrastructure development bigotry. When the role and how to achieve the development goals of the subject cannot be identified and realised, farmers are both the indispensable and indecipherable agents of agricultural and rural development.
In Vietnam and the Mekong Delta, the demand of the development process that focuses on poverty reduction and rural development has encouraged the involvement of various knowledge brokering actors:
international non-governmental organisations (under development projects and consultation services), government agencies (mainly through agricultural extension systems and governmental programmes), universities and research agencies (via their technology transfer centers or practical research implementation), mass organisations, and mass media. Relied on for their visions and resources, such knowledge brokers, who are trained experts in certain fields, transfer “proven” technology and knowledge to “targeted” communities that are believed capable of acquiring and using the knowledge to solve their
“underdeveloped” problems. Within the rural development context, it is evident that the synthesis of the knowledge triangle of education, research, and extension services has been practiced to ensure positive development impacts. Yet, under the umbrella of mainstream development based on expert knowledge, technocratic agendas, and “for the common good” goals (cf. Ziai 2011), farmers and rural communities are seen in most cases as passive recipients of knowledge for development.
The previous chapters have discussed multi-directional interaction webs among knowledge and development professionals and rural communities over both formal and informal spheres. In most cases, however, professionals are knowledge generators and transferors while farmers are recipients of knowledge for development. The increased knowledge application of recipient communities is one of the most
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accurate indicators for the success or failure of diffusion efforts. The first sections of the chapter will explore farmer’s knowledge receiving, sharing, and adoption practices. This chapter continues to delve into cases of farmers who through their interaction with knowledge professionals have acted as knowledge brokers and generators. It explores the alternative development path, new identity and undertakings and knowledge brokerage and networking undertaken by knowledge brokering farmers. The chapter concludes with implications for cultivating farmer-based knowledge work and communities as an alternative force for sustainable development in the Mekong Delta.
6.1. Actionable knowledge in the ocean of information: From farmers’ perspectives
It is a truism that with the development of communications technologies and networks, farmers can without an easily hitch access immense amounts of information for their production, social interaction, and entertainment purposes from diverse channels. It is also a platitude that pragmatic and actionable knowledge for farmers is becoming more and more important from both the economic and sustainable development perspectives in a world that is “flattening”. Farmers have abundant information but they have serious knowledge gaps from basic system production thinking to environmental sustainable approaches, as well as collective organisations and international market integration (results from Delphi Survey and Local Television Survey). Agricultural sector leaders often assert that our science and technology are abundantly available and accessible to all farmers. This is only true in view of on-paper scientific knowledge stocks, not in-reality for farming production (Short conservation at a workshop, farmer, male, Phong Dien, 30.11.2010)
Previous discussions have clearly demonstrated that multiple forms of knowledge are translated and diffused as external sources of knowledge from extension, research, and private sector systems to the farming community in the Mekong Delta. This section, from the perspective of knowledge users, will explore which knowledge channels are most used by farmers and how farmers exploit such sources of knowledge for their development decision-making. This section also discusses difficulties farmers face when adopting knowledge that is counterintuitive and alien to them.
Farmer’s popular channels of knowledge: Results from focus group discussions
This section primarily presents the results from farmer’s focus group discussions (FGD) (see Appendix 1.2). Eight FGDs were organised in three of Can Tho City’s districts (Binh Thuy, Phong Dien, Cai Rang) and two sessions held in Hau Giang Province. The researcher, with the support of local agricultural officials, selected participants for focus groups based on pre-determined criteria. Each FGD consisted of five to seven farmers who shared similar social, economic and cultural backgrounds, experiences, and concerns in agricultural production activities. FGDs also included geography, state support, and farming system cohort differentiations. Each approximately two-hour FGD consisted of two sessions where
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farmers were invited first to identify and rank the channels of knowledge that are important to their agricultural and rural development activities. In the second session, they were encouraged to discuss the sustainable agriculture concepts and practices in which they were engaged (see results in Chapter Five).
The findings demonstrate that agricultural television programs are in most cases highly-rated. Still, there are varied priorities of knowledge sources, that ranged from integrated formalised and social learning structures, devices, and spaces, and involved actors from different knowledge-worlds (see Table 6.1).
Table 6.1: Channels of knowledge communications prioritised by different farmer groups Farmer’s
group Rankings
1st ranking 2nd ranking 3rd ranking
Urbanised
area - TV agricultural programs; - Agricultural supply agents/companies Semi-urban
area - TV agricultural programs;
- Workshops and training (by universities,
extensionists, supply companies)
- “Good” farmers;
- Training + materials;
- Study tours
- Café;
- Neighbours;
- Books;
- Cooperation teams Rural area - TV agricultural programs - District extension;
- Personal experience;
- “Good” farmers;
- Research institutes, universities
- Café;
- Farmers’ unit;
- Workshops and training (commune extensionists;
- Agricultural supply agents/companies) Intensive
support by the
government
- Provincial extension (with the commune agriculture technical group, training, study tours)
- TV agricultural programs - Company extension;
- Other clubs;
- Materials at the club;
- Loudspeaker system Standard
support - TV agricultural programs;
- Workshops - Training;
- Study tours;
- Café;
- Radio
- Farmers’ unit;
- Agricultural supply agents/companies;
- Loudspeaker system;
- Materials;
- Family, relatives, neighbours Low
support - TV agricultural programs -Leaflets, training materials,
newspapers - Family, relatives, neighbours Vegetable
and aquaculture
- On-farm meeting - Internet;
- On-farm workshops;
- Agricultural supply agents/companies;
- Training materials
- Friend groups;
- Home visits to similar models
- Café;
- Training by district extension and fishery staff
Fruit - TV agricultural programs;
- Training by research institutes, universities + training materials
- On-farm workshop;
- “Good” farmers;
- Books
- Clubs and cooperation teams;
- Newspapers
176 Sugar-cane - Company extension - Workshops;
- Experience sharing (by word of mouth among club members);
- CTU, provincial departments.
- model study tours
Source: Own data
The diversity of knowledge channels can be observed in intensive agricultural production areas and inter- crop farming models. In the semi-urban and rural areas, for example, informal interactions with other farmers such as neighbours and progressive farmers are emphasised, besides formal training organised by extension and educational organisations and agricultural companies. Semi-urban farming communities appear to benefit more from agricultural extension and development projects due to physical and social accessibility preferences. In urbanised areas where agricultural activities are characterised by subsistence cultivation or sporadic crops in regions with suspended urbanisation projects, farmer’s new sources of information are largely television programs and agricultural companies.
For communities with intensive support by the government, for example, model villages, agricultural cooperatives, or farmer’s clubs, their main channels of knowledge include extension projects directly managed by and connected with higher-level managers and among group members assembled and strengthened by such projects. Meanwhile low-supported communities in mainly rural areas tend to be marginalised within their relative and neighbour networks.
Unlike rice monoculture farmers, fruit, aquaculture, or sugarcane producers are likely to be more actively engaged in different channels of knowledge in order to satisfy their large-scale and commercialised farming. Training sessions or workshops with consultations of academics and scientists are preferred.
Besides traditional methods, books and the internet are used to explore new technologies not yet supplied by current educational programs. Knowledge produced from such specialised individuals or groups of farmers very often can be harnessed to provide models or recommendations in television or direct contact training programs (FGD, Hau Giang, 05.03.2011).
Our results are compatible with the research by the Vietnam’s Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (Pham Hoang Ngan et al. 2009) conducted in three provinces nationwide (Can Tho in the Mekong Delta, Lao Cai in mountainous northern Vietnam and Hanoi in the Red River Delta) that the four most popular knowledge channels of farmers were television (100% of respondents), agribusinesses (51.3%), extension (51.3%), and associations (48.4%). It should be noted that only in Can Tho is agribusiness identified as a highly influential knowledge channel (Can Tho: 48.4% of respondents, Lao Cai: 7.4%, Hanoi: 4.9%) (Pham Hoang Ngan et al. 2009, 45). In general, the findings indicate that external sources of knowledge are prominent accumulated knowledge stocks of farming communities in Vietnam and the Mekong Delta. What should be emphasised from our FGD analysis is
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that farmers-to-farmer interaction remains indispensable to the application and generation of new agricultural knowledge and technology of farming communities in the Mekong Delta. Important channels of farmer’s horizontal knowledge exchange consist of on-farm meetings, morning coffee get-togethers, and experience sharing among club members or with experienced farmers. More than a condition, farmer’s prior knowledge is also regarded as a source for further knowledge acquisition.
It is not hard to understand why agriculture-related programs on television are the top preferred channel for information and knowledge obtainment by farmers in the Mekong Delta. The last decade’s evolution of the television industry that has created broad reach, around-the-clock broadcasts, and diverse programs is one source of change, but the main cause is that knowledge and development professionals have progressively made use of television to transfer and exchange knowledge to and with farmers. Each provincial television station often has four to five periodical television programs and roughly the same number of radio programs on agriculture and rural development from pest forecasts to intensive technique programs and live expert-farmer exchange forums (see Appendix 6.1). A farmer in Can Tho can watch several programs from other provinces from both the Mekong Delta and nationwide, which largely satisfy differentiated tastes and the types of knowledge being sought:
Television is an important source of knowledge for me. I can see and hear at the same time about technological description and explanation. Sometimes, I call live programs and my question is answered (Interview 174, farmer, male, Thot Not, 18.10.2010).
However, experienced farmers and high-technology audiences have started to complain about the repetition of the same inept motif programs with less trend analysis and strategic projection (Interview 294, senior researcher, male, Can Tho, 14.12.2010). Further, farmers are becoming more critical about expert consultation in programs funded by agribusinesses (see Chapter Five).
There is an obvious stagnation of newspapers in providing information and knowledge for the farming communities. Farmers in agricultural clubs or cooperatives still see newspapers as an important source of knowledge, due to the free distribution of local and agriculture newspapers to these organisations. Our content analysis of Can Tho daily newspapers over 01.04.2010 to 31.03.2011 volumes shows that despite its sector’s updated, “hot” issue seizure such as water management, aquaculture development, rice cultivation, and rural strategies, the majority of information is transferred under the news and policy analysis forms, making it a good source of reference for government officials rather then giving voice to the people of Can Tho City (see Appendix 6.2).
Knowledge for action: Three types of knowledge
Our FGDs have also demonstrated that farmers rarely use one sole channel of knowledge in their actual actions or decision-making in their daily production activities. Instead, an integration of multiple sources of knowledge is constantly practiced (see Figure 6.2). Many local extensionists consider that this “solidity