For further information contact: Reinhardt Howeler

Tran Ngoc Ngoan, a professor from Thai Nguyen University, stands at the podium opposite a large white bust of Ho Chi Minh on a stage adorned with brightly colored banners bearing communist party slogans. After a brief introduction to the meeting, Prof. Ngoan takes his seat among the farmers, while extension officers begin compiling the experiment results on a blackboard.

The extensionists preside over a lively polling process, in which farmers comment on the various options, ask questions, and finally vote through a show of hands for the technologies they prefer. The majority favors both the cassava variety KM94 and a local variety. In addition, most are convinced that the best option for controlling soil erosion is to plant hedgerows of the leguminous shrub Tephrosia candida along the contours of their steeply sloping cassava fields. They're also sold on the idea of intercropping cassava with peanuts to raise farm income and improve soil fertility.

National Teams

Not many years ago, these farmers would most likely have been summoned to the meeting hall to be told what they should plant and where. But thanks to an innovative  project funded by Japan's Nippon Foundation, they have an opportunity to test and choose the technologies that best meet their needs.

Now well into its second phase (1999-2003), the project is disseminating sustainable practices for cassava-based cropping systems as widely as possible. "The success of this work," says Reinhardt Howeler, CIAT soil scientist and project coordinator, "depends on national teams of researchers and extension officers working with farmer leaders at numerous pilot sites."

Such teams have been formed with six organizations in Vietnam and five in Thailand. The project also operates to a lesser extent in southern China and Indonesia. Researchers and extensionists have been trained in participatory methods, allowing them to support farmer research on a growing scale.

In Vietnam farmers at 21 pilot sites are conducting a total of 155 participatory research trials. For Thailand the figure is 106 trials at 21 sites. "Building on experience with participatory research in the project's first phase" (1994-98), Howeler notes, "our national partners are now employing farmer participatory extension methods to achieve wide adoption of the practices farmers have selected."

"This is the only way farmers in our very diverse upland areas will adopt new technologies," says Ngoan, who is Vietnam's national coordinator for the project.

Eye-opening Experience

Clearly, there's no lack of alternatives. Cassava research, Howeler explains, has produced improved varieties as well as simple agronomic practices that effectively counter soil erosion and declining soil fertility. But since the new practices require extra labor and capital and may take land out of crop production, it's vital that farmers be directly involved in determining which options offer attractive benefits at acceptable costs.

The participatory approach begins with farmer visits to demonstration plots at experiment stations or to other villages where farmers have already conducted participatory trials and adopted new technologies.

A farmer group from Nadee District of Thailand's Prachinburi Province visited one such village 2 years ago. Group members say they enjoyed being able to exchange ideas with other farmers. It was an eye-opener for them to see how much progress was being made in a village much like their own. After discussing what they'd seen, the visiting farmers decided which options to test in their own fields, and extension officers then helped them set up the trials.

Along the lower end of each experimental plot, there is a trench lined with plastic sheeting. The trenches trap runoff water and eroded soil, which farmers collect and measure at the middle and end of the growing season, calculating the soil loss per unit of area. "Once farmers can actually see and measure soil erosion," notes Howeler, "it ceases to be an abstract concept for them, and they feel motivated to do something about it."

Building Sustainable Livelihoods

Much is at stake in these farmers' search for ways to intensify cassava production while protecting the soil. Grown mainly by small farmers in marginal upland areas, the tropical American root crop has been transformed in Southeast Asia from a secondary staple into an important raw material for starch production and animal feed, especially in Thailand and Vietnam. The transformation is being driven now by a new generation of high-yielding, high-starch varieties, developed through intensive collaborative between CIAT and national programs, with strong financial support from the Japanese government.

Improved cassava production offers upland farmers a rare opportunity to boost their incomes by catering to diverse markets. A major drawback, though, is that more or less continuous cultivation of the crop on sloping soils leads to a sharp decline in soil fertility and to serious erosion problems, undermining the sustainability of cassava-based systems.

But experience in a growing number of rural communities demonstrates that this outcome is by no means inevitable. Take the case of Tien Phong village in Vietnam´s northern Thai Nguyen Province. Following a visit to demonstration plots at Thai Nguyen University in the first year of the Nippon Foundation-funded project, a small group of farmers from the village began testing new cassava production practices.

A year later they were cautiously optimistic about some of the new technologies. Over time, though, their confidence in trial results grew, explains farmer group leader Ngo Trung Kien. With new cassava varieties--now grown on 65 percent of the village's cassava area--farmers have nearly doubled their crop yields. Villagers mainly use cassava as feed for pigs--their primary source of cash income. The number of pigs in the village has increased, and the cost of feeding them has declined.

Higher incomes from pig production have visibly improved farmers´ livelihoods. Kien, for example, has just sold the motorcycle he bought a few years ago and is about to buy a newer one. At this and four other pilot sites in northern Vietnam, Howeler notes, the adoption of improved technologies, including new cassava varieties, has raised gross incomes by four to five times those reported in 1995 at the outset of the project.

Kien and dozens of other farmers have established Tephrosia hedgerows in their upland fields to check soil erosion. In addition to maintaining cassava productivity over the long term, this spares them the trouble of digging out soil that has been washed down from upland slopes into their lowland rice fields. The farmers are also applying a combination of manure and chemical fertilizers to their cassava and are intercropping it with peanuts--practices that increase their income while improving the soil.

With more pigs around, Kien mentions, farmers can now apply more manure to their rice, sweet potato, and cassava, helping maintain reasonably good yields on the village´s poor sandy soils.

The new practices have spread among farmers at Tien Phong thanks to the efforts of the group led by Kien. From just a handful of members in 1995, it has grown to include about 80 farmers today. Kien's functions as group leader, he says, are "to organize meetings during the growing season and at harvest for evaluating the results of experiments and deciding what to do next."

Demonstrating Commitment

Under rather different circumstances in Thailand, the solid commitment of national institutions to fomenting farmer organization and participatory methods has also produced exciting results. Various improved varieties now cover about 1 million hectares, or 87 percent of the country's total cassava area. According to Watana Watananonta, who is national coordinator for the project and serves with the Department of Agriculture, the resulting intensification of cassava production has made it particularly urgent that Thai farmers seize new options for maintaining soil quality.

A rapidly growing number of them are doing precisely that. At 21 pilot sites, 622 farmers have planted a total of 123 kilometers of vetiver grass hedgerows to control soil erosion. The work at seven of these sites is being financed by the country's Department of Agricultural Extension in an impressive demonstration of national commitment to achieving sustainable cassava production.

The fruits of this commitment are much in evidence at Thaa Chiniit May ("harbor of a new life"), a village in Chachoengsao Province, which was founded two decades ago by migrants from Thailand's crowded Northeast. A group of about 40 farmers here began testing new technologies in 1998. They've adopted three improved varieties and planted about 2 kilometers of hedgerows with vetiver grass and other species.

During a recent visit, the farmers pointed out how terraces are starting to form behind the hedgerows, reducing the threat of soil erosion. Soon, they'll learn from DOAE staff how to maintain nurseries of hedgerows species, so they can plant these on a larger scale. In addition, the farmers have begun applying chemical fertilizers on cassava, and they're interested in using "green manure" species, particularly Canavalia ensiformis, to further improve soil fertility.

Somchai Nasing is an especially active member of the group. Like his counterparts in Vietnam, he has readily grasped the advantages of collective action. "The group gives us a chance to exchange ideas among ourselves," he explains, "and it better enables us to obtain assistance from the extension service."

Back at Vietnam's Thong Nhat village, the field day closes in a modest feast displaying local cuisine and the farmers' unstinting hospitality. With small cups of rice wine held high, they offer toast after toast to one another as well as the researchers who helped them seize the power to choose.