| Prof Murray McGregor (Curtin)
and Dr Daniel Walker (CSIRO Tropical Agriculture) attended the AFSR-E Symposium
in Pretoria, South Africa over the period 29 November - 04 December 1998
and participated in the IUFRO Special Session. More than 500 delegates
attended the Symposium, representing 73 countries. The CGIAR agencies and
other international agencies such as the World Bank and Ford Foundation
were well represented, as were many significant national research agencies.
The opportunity to review the work of these agencies (see below) and to
dialogue with a range of participants proved invaluable in consolidating
existing relationships with international researchers and in developing
new contacts.
Because the Symposium took place in South Africa, South
Africa research agencies, government departments and industry bodies were
particularly well represented. Primary industries in South Africa and Australia
share many features in common and yet are starkly contrasted in other ways,
which made the establishment of contact with South African colleagues of
particular interest. For example, the opportunity to compare and contrast
strategic responses to the need to better management environmental impacts
of the sugar industry in Queensland and South Africa through dialogue with
senior staff from the South African Cane Growers has opened opportunities
for comparative assessment across these industries.
Participation in the Symposium provided Prof McGregor
and Dr Walker with opportunity to review work from across the world. The
majority of Farming Systems Research & Extension’s foremost researchers
and practitioners presented papers. A total of 202 papers was presented
and was supported by a number of posters, panel sessions and workshops.
These papers provided for some significant review of progress
over the last decade, and a wealth of case study experience. Nevertheless,
the programme as a whole provided some cause for concern. There was a clear
sense that the farming systems research and extension "paradigm" has failed
to develop the characteristics of a robust and productive discipline. It
might be argued that farming systems research and extension reflects praxis
rather than theory and therefore that the lack of development of any tangible
theoretical basis is of no concern. However, applied disciplines require
mechanisms for evaluating efficacy in order to foster progress and to enable
the efficient allocation of resources. The symposium was notable for the
virtual absence of papers containing significant self-assessment or external
evaluation of the efficacy of practice. Indeed, the emerging orthodoxy
apparently discouraged such critique. In this sense, emerging approaches
to evaluation by Australian R&D providers and R&D Corporations
compare very favourably to the levels evidenced by many other national
and international research agencies.
This report will be placed on the Muresk Institute of
Agriculture web site once accepted by RIRDC. A copy of the McGregor et
al. paper can be found at the following URL:
http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/muresk/publications/murray/micromac.htm
Prof McGregor presented at paper titled "Micro and macro-level
approaches to modelling decision making" at the IUFRO special session "Process-based
research in sustainable agricultural development: integrating social, economic
and ecological perspectives". This paper was co-authored by Fay Rola-Rubzen
and Roy Murray-Prior of Curtin University. The paper drew on the research
work of the authors in a range of environments in Australia, Africa and
Asia. The paper explored the use of a range of modelling approaches that
have been used to represent micro-level decision making related to sustainable
agricultural development. The major conclusions from the paper were that
single disciplinary focused research is not very effective in concurrently
meeting today’s triple challenge of feeding the world, preventing poverty
and protecting the earth. As a result social science research must be integrated
with production, physical and environmental research outputs if it is to
be effective in a policy setting. This suggests that there is a need for
a multidisciplinary approach to process-based research. From a modelling
perspective the one methodological approach will not be sufficient to capture
the decision making process and its subsequent impacts and a pluralist
approach was advocated in the paper.
Dr Walker presented a paper titled "Integrating R&D
into decision-making for natural resource management at a regional scale".
This paper, co-authored by Stuart Cowell and Andrew Johnson of CSIRO Tropical
Agricultural, addressed means to improve integration of research outcomes
into decision making through consideration of the roles of managers, planners
and scientists. The paper drew heavily on case study work in the Herbert
River catchment of north Queensland. The paper argued for a particular
and emerging role in designing approaches to adaptive decision support
that provide real opportunities for integrating research outcomes into
decision-making. |
