Master Farmer Part 3

MASTER FARMER

TEACHING SMALL FARMERS MANAGEMENT

BRUCE M. LANSDALE

WESTVIEW PRESS                       1986

PART III

Chapter 1: Training Master Farmers

• What kind of training do peasants need?
• What should be the goals of agricultural education in a developing society?
• What are the shortcomings of educational systems in developing nations?

 

Hodja story #2

One day Hodja was sitting in front of his hut searching in the dust when a neighbor came by and asked him what he was looking for. When Hodja told him he had lost his gold coin, the neighbor kneeled down and started sifting through the dirt. After a while, when he asked the Hodja exactly where he had lost it, Hodja told him that it had disappeared in the hut. When the surprised neighbor asked why he was searching outside, Hodja replied, “Its much too dark inside the hut to look for it.”

Peasants throughout the world have demonstrated their capacity to become master farmers – managers capable of planning, organizing, supervising, and overcoming the variety of challenges inherent in farm work and rural living – even though many development workers continue to look upon them as passive objects in technical assistance programs. Economists and other experts have tended to consult officials in cities for solutions to the peasant’s problems, bypassing the peasants, who they assume are incapable of resolving their own problems. Like Hodja, the specialists think it is “too dark inside.” Perceptive village workers, however, quickly realize that peasants are eager to improve their way of life and have the potential to do so. Yet development agencies have generally relied on extension services and community development programs to supply the required help rather than providing institutional training programs for the peasants, which they have regarded with skepticism.

In the same way that formal and nonformal secondary and postsecondary vocational agricultural instruction has played a significant role in training master farmers in the West, specialized training is needed in Third World countries, even though the costs may be relatively high. Agricultural training is not a matter of selecting one method of training over another, but rather of developing an approach that integrates a variety of complementary educational techniques. Institutional training is emphasized throughout this book because this most important element of development has been generally neglected.

UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM

The outlook of Greek peasants during the early part of this century was similar to that of peasants in Third World countries today. The peasants generally accepted their feelings of helplessness in the face of constant misfortune as inevitable and played a primary role in initiating it. Their misfortune was something neither they nor those who wanted to help them could do much about. In Greece today, progressive farmers have grown to accept change as inevitable. If development workers in Greece and elsewhere are to utilize the peasant’s potential for change, they must first understand the characteristics of the villagers that once hindered progress in the Greek countryside.

1. The peasants lacked self-confidence. Few considered themselves to be “winners.”
2. The peasants had had no management training; they did not understand how to plan or organize their operations or how to maintain adequate records.
3. Villagers were unwilling to accept advice from outsiders.
4. In addition to being ill equipped to solve such problems as pest control for crops and disease among animals, peasants were weak in problem-solving skills and were thus at a disadvantage when dealing with shrewd merchants.
5. The agricultural knowledge of the peasants was restricted to current village practices. Rural schools taught little or nothing about modern agriculture or village development.
6. The peasants lacked manual skills and dexterity, and they had to hire technicians for most building or maintenance work.

 

THEORY AND PRACTICE

Essential to the progress of rural development is an educational system based on indigenous needs rather than a system transplanted from an alien culture. In the first half of this century Greece’s developing society stressed the traditional educational system, which was not designed to meet the requirements of educating both skilled master farmers and theoretically trained bureaucrats. Likewise the Greek culture tended to emphasize the value of theoretical knowledge at the expense of practical experience, leading those peasants who succeeded in the traditional system to pursue another life-style than village farming. A development worker can see in the following description of Greek education instances at every institutional level in which the schools did not meet the needs of the peasant farmer. This continues to be one of the major problems of education in the Third World today.

At the turn of the century, the city dwellers’ stereotype of the Greek peasant was a manual worker who had limited theoretical knowledge. They failed to appreciate his close relationship with the natural world around him or to recognize his wisdom. They assumed that his limited knowledge or urban life and thought indicated a corresponding lack of intelligence.

Traditional education

• The first step toward development in Greece during the 400 years of Turkish occupation was the organization of elementary schools by village priests to teach Greek children reading and writing.
• After 1821 when Southern Greece was liberated from the Ottoman Empire, the government introduced the high school, modelled after the French lycée and the German gymnasium, where education was by rote learning, with emphasis on classical Greek.
• Finally, at the university level, schools of agriculture were established to prepare agriculturists to work with the farmers. Many of the students at these schools came from the cities or had spent their high school years there and had had little practical training.
• Because of the absence of practical experience in farming and the premium placed by these students on theoretical knowledge, the university trainee often was unskilled in the very areas in which he was to instruct the villagers.
• He was not versed in troubleshooting with machinery, had little practical experience in caring for livestock, was often unable to diagnose or treat diseases in plants and animals, and lacked self-confidence, especially in his early years after graduation. However, because of his university education, he felt superior to the lowly, uneducated peasant.

 

More than a diploma

Training master farmers requires different programs from the traditional educational format exported by Western countries to developing nations. “Diploma-itis” is one of the worst plagues ever foisted on the Third World. Master farmers need more than the diploma obtained by memorizing a vast body of facts: They must have an educational system that stimulates them to use their minds to solve problems, they must work more productively with their hands, and they must acquire greater self-confidence.

• For a Greek student it was not the education that counted but the passing grade that allowed him to receive a diploma qualifying him for the civil service.

President Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania described the need for non-traditional education in his classic article, “Education for Self-Reliance”: “The education provided must therefore encourage the development in each citizen of three things: an inquiring mind; an ability to learn from what others do, and reject or adapt it to his own needs; and a basic confidence in his own position as a free and equal member of the society, who values others and is valued by them for what he does and not what he obtains.”

This was the approach to education that Dr. John Henry House felt was needed in the Balkans twenty years before he founded the American Farm School at the beginning of the 20^th century:

“Early in my taking up educational work I discovered what seemed to me to be a great defect in our educational system. I found that boys who had a secondary and high school education were supposed not to dirty their hands with manual labor. Village boys were being educated away from their villages and were being taught that they had entered into a higher social class. Labor with the hands was considered beneath them. I said we are giving these boys a wrong education. My mind immediately started to work out a plan of education which should train children along the heart, the head and the hands. It was years afterwards that I was able to see my ideal realized in the Thessalonica Agricultural and Industrial Institute.”

Even today, however, planners seem to have difficulty grasping the implications of Nyerere’s and House’s ideas and expressing them to the students.

SERGEANTS OF AGRICULTURE

Another way to understand the problem of training master farmers is to look at the structure of agricultural development in military terms. A well-organized army consists of three levels of personnel: privates, non-commissioned officers, and commissioned officers. The privates are the army’s foundation, whereas the commissioned officers, graduates of officer training schools, provide leadership and planning. However, the key to an army’s successful operation lies with the sergeants, whose basic training and practical experience enable them to understand every detail of how the army works.

• In Greece many peasants and farm workers who were accustomed to long hours of back-breaking work had much in common with privates in the army.
• A real problem in Greek agricultural development has been the shortage of agricultural sergeants: those who link the peasant and the agriculturist and who are trained and equipped to deal with the practical aspects of daily farming.
• It is as important to provide secondary education for farmers so that they can become the capable managers so urgently needed in developing countries as it is to train sergeants in the army.

Sergeants in the army are the product of two different forms of training, which should also be available to the sergeants of agriculture. In the army those who have come up through the ranks over a period of years are from the school of hard knocks. They have been promoted periodically until they have reached a position of authority and command. Similarly, some farmers in each village have become competent by learning from their own mistakes and those of others. Because they have had to make choices, they have become effective decision makers and know that no problem has a single solution. The difficulty in a rapidly developing society is that there are not enough sergeants of agriculture with sufficient training in innovation and problem solving to deal effectively with the ever-changing challenges that farmers face.

Because a private would need to serve for many years in the regular army to acquire the qualities of a competent sergeant, the military has organized a second form of training in special schools to shorten this training period. Corresponding schools are needed in the developing countries to train sergeants for agriculture; unfortunately there are few of these. Just as the army instructs its personnel in management, so these schools must train farm youth for their role as master farmers or agricultural technicians.

The qualities of an army sergeant provide an interesting guideline for the requirements of the ideal master farmer. Like his counterpart in the army he must be motivated to rise above the level of the private. He must emulate the essential attributes of an effective sergeant so that he can lead as well as follow. Technical competence growing out of personal experience and organizational skills are basic requirements. He should have confidence in himself and be open to the suggestions of others. Flexibility is important to him in dealing with changing conditions. He must have the necessary basic knowledge and ability to solve the various problems that constantly arise. Like the good sergeant the master farmer must be an able manager, which in essence is a combination of all these characteristics.

KAKOMIRIS AND NIKOKIRIS

Two Greek words, which have no real equivalents in English, kakomiris and nikokiris, can be used to distinguish two extreme types of agriculturalists: those who are satisfied with their lot (privates in agriculture) and the master farmers (the sergeants). The kakomiris (literally translated as “the ill-fated one”) is the peasant whose luck is down or who has suffered some natural misfortune. Discussion with many villagers confirms that the kakomiris almost always brings the bad luck on himself through lack of adequate planning, even though he is inclined to blame others for all his setbacks.

• In direct contrast to the kakomiris is the nikokiris (literally translated as “the master of the house”). He initiates action, plans and organizes his work effectively, employs other peasants, and takes advantage of every opportunity to increase his income and the size of his holdings.
• The nikokiris is a leader in the village, respected by others for his judgement. Villagers turn to him for support in times of crisis.
• The terms arrayed in Table 1 can be used to distinguish the typical thought and behavior patterns of the kakomiris and ninokiris in a variety of situations.
• Just as industrial managers have discovered that it is profitable to train unskilled workers to become master technicians, it is also important that corresponding training be made available to the rural people in developing societies.

The ever-increasing proportion of nikokiris-type peasants has played a significant role in transforming the Greek villages from backward, dormant communities into dynamic, progressive societies within this century. These farmers are capable managers, better able to plan their lives and organize their work. They have acquired the knowledge and skills to deal more effectively with their problems. These are the men and women who have led Greece to new heights of agricultural production while creating a more satisfying way of life for themselves.

 

Chapter 2: A Society in Transition