From plot to watershed management : Experience in farmer participatory Vertisol technology generation and adoption in highland Ethiopia

Vertisols are important underutilized resources in the East African highlands because of their inherent waterlogging problem. In this paper, group experience in the design, development and diffusion of a technology package through farmer participation for improving management and productivity of Vertisols is described. The results indicate that farmer knowledge, capacity and incentives are important considerations at every step in technology generation and diffusion. Results also indicate that technology adoption is not a one-off decision rather farmers move from acquisition of knowledge to adoption to continuous or discontinuous use. The set of factors influencing each decision may be also different. The experience also indicates that for effective use of technologies that are complex and may create externality, household level decisions are not adequate, rather involvement of the community in watershed or landscape management may be required. Participation of individual households in such collective action for common resource management is most likely to be influenced by the potential benefit to the participants. The experience of the project also indicates that introduction of component technologies and other interventions in a haphazard manner may not lead to sustained improvement in productivity and human welfare and maintenance of the ecosystem. An integrated and holistic approach incorporating biophysical, economic and social dimensions of any ecosystem is more appropriate for achieving those goals.