Simulating the reality of small-scale farmers

Future Agricultures Consortium plans to develop an interactive, open-source, web-based computer simulation game as an educational tool to inform and influence policy debates about the Green Revolution in Africa, including the dynamics of agrarian change and governance of agricultural science and technology. The design and implementation work for this project will be developed over a three-year time span from March 2010 to February 2013.

This project is exploring the political economy of cereal seed systems across five distinct country contexts (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Ghana and Zimbabwe). Each country has a very different history of research and development in this area; in each setting the importance of the public or the private sector differs, with different actors and interests involved; each country has a different reliance on ‘modern’ hybrid (or sometimes biotech) varieties and associated R&D and supply systems; and each country has a different form and extent of independent informal sector, involving networks of farmer experimenters and seed bulkers and suppliers.

In 2008, Future Agricultures Consortium with the Salzburg Global Seminar and theInstitute of Development Studies (IDS) helped to co-convene the initiative "Toward a 'Green Revolution' in Africa?" This initiative brought together many key stakeholders to discuss and debate what a uniquely green revolution for Africa might look like.

The issue of 'farmer voice' emerged from the conference.

Science and technology in agriculture are once again a focus for policy attention. Many argue that a way out of the

Research is critical to the future of agricultural development in Africa. But what sort of research and for whom? In the past, inappropriate framings of problems and solutions have combined with limited field capacity and poorly functioning innovation systems. This has meant that the diverse livelihood pathways and agricultural technology demands of poor agriculturalists and pastoralists in Africa have often not been served by current arrangements for agricultural innovation. With the current policy debate about agricultural research and technology development so couched in "rational" technical and economic terms, there has been little scope to debate the wider social and political ramifications of new ways of organising, funding and governing agricultural research and development.

The objective is to elicit opinions on the state of the extension system and look forward to the future. It gives national and regional extension experts from government and NGOs, farmers and Development Agents, and private sector (e.g. investors in agriculture) to contribute to the national efforts to improve the system.