Browsing by Autor "Jeffery W. Bentley"

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Agroecology in Practice
(2025) Jeffery W. Bentley; Paul Van Mele
C<scp>ommentary</scp>: The right message and method
(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Jeffery W. Bentley
"Commentary: The right message and method." International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, 7(2), pp. 79–80
Ethnopathology: local knowledge of plant health problems in Bangladesh, Uganda and Bolivia
(Wiley, 2009) Jeffery W. Bentley; E. Boa; P. Kelly; M. Harun‐Ar‐Rashid; A. K. M. Rahman; F. Kabeere; J. Herbas
All peoples have names for and knowledge of plants, animals and other things in the real world. An ethnopathology (or, more strictly, ‘ethnophytopathology’) – study in Bangladesh, Uganda and Bolivia revealed that smallholder farmers label plant health problems with meaningful names. A local name for a plant health problem typically has two kinds of meaning. The first is a literal translation of the name, often a kind of shorthand description of the symptom. The second and most important kind of meaning is the denotative meaning (the thing in the real world which the name actually refers to). Local words for plant health problems often label the symptom rather than the actual disease. This is logical, since smallholders cannot observe microscopic causal organisms. Local concepts for plant health problems do not necessarily classify the natural world in exactly the same way that scientists do, yet local terms for plant health problems are still meaningful. It is not clear if folk classifications of plant health problems are phylogenetic classifications (e.g. ‘mammals’ vs. ‘fish’) or ecological (e.g. ‘seafood’ vs. ‘meat and poultry’). Cross‐culturally, local knowledge recognizes that plants are alive, and that they may be ill or healthy, perhaps in analogy with human health.
Even useful weeds are pests: Ethnobotany in the Bolivian Andes
(Taylor & Francis, 2005) Jeffery W. Bentley; M. Webb; S. Nina; Salomón Pérez
Abstract Abstract Weed scientists, agronomists and an anthropologist in Bolivia surveyed farmers' practices and studied the ethnobotany of weeds. The hypothesis tested was that farmers managed weeds so as to take advantage of their uses. Farmers weeded row crops twice per cycle. Crop rotations usually began with potatoes and ended with an Old World cereal, broadcast in stands too dense to weed. Many weeds were fed to cattle, and fodder is the only use that requires more than an armload of weeds. Other uses of weeds (e.g., for home remedies) require just a few plants. Although most weeds have uses, they must still be controlled. The most important consideration regarding weeds is not their uses, but the fact that they are pests. Keywords: Weed controlethnobotanyBoliviaQuechuaAndes Acknowledgements This publication is an output from Prommasel, a research project funded by the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) for the benefit of developing countries. The authors thank the farmers in Cochabamba who collaborated in the study, and Gregorio Gonzales, Juan Villarroel and Sue Cowgill, who participated in the weed survey in 2000. Margaret Smith, Fredy Almendras and Sergio Ballón helped organise the quantitative data. Many thanks to Brian Sims and the reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Going Public: A New Extension Method
(Taylor & Francis, 2003) Jeffery W. Bentley; E. Boa; Paul Van Mele; Juan Almanza; Daniel Vásquez; Steve Eguino
Contemporary agricultural extension uses intensive face-to-face communication, especially for teaching farmers about pest and disease management. Development scholars are increasingly concerned about the cost of these programmes, and some are trying to reach more farmers through mass media. Small media is another recent option. We have developed a novel method of face-to-face extension, which we call Going Public. It makes use of places where farmers meet spontaneously, such as markets, bus terminals and other public places, to create a two-way learning channel. Going Public allows scientists, extensionists and farmer experts to show things to people, answer questions, run short experiential learning exercises and potentially to distribute material, as in any other face-to-face method, but it is quick and it allows contact with people from many areas at once. It also allows scientists to gather feedback from farmers in a social setting where the farmers are comfortable, surrounded by their friends and neighbours, but where they are also free to come and go.
How farmers benefit from plant clinics: an impact study in Bolivia
(Taylor & Francis, 2011) Jeffery W. Bentley; E. Boa; Fredy Almendras; Pablo Franco; Olivia Antezana; Oscar Edmundo Diaz; Javier Franco; Juan José García Villarroel
Between 2000 and 2009, nine plant clinics in three agro-ecological areas of Bolivia (Andes, lowlands and valleys) served about 800 communities in an area roughly 300 × 100km. Over 6000 farmers consulted these clinics with 9000 queries. Many found the advice so useful that they visited the clinics repeatedly. A survey of 238 clinic users found that most adopted the clinics' recommendations. Fruit and vegetable growers who followed the clinic recommendations tended to spend less on pesticides. As for certain crops like potato, citrus and peach palm, a modest increase in pesticides helped improve the quality and quantity of the harvest. Farmers improved their incomes by following the clinics' advice. The poorest farmers enjoyed the greatest increase in income per hectare. This was the first study to explore the impact of plant clinics; future studies need to be improved, for example by obtaining baseline data and by comparing clinic users to their peers who have not used clinics.
Impact of IPM Extension for Smallholder Farmers in the Tropics
(2009) Jeffery W. Bentley
Local knowledge and agricultural decision making in the Philippines: Class, gender and resistance by Virginia D. Nazarea-Sandoval
(Springer Nature (Netherlands), 1997) Jeffery W. Bentley
Participatory Research (PR) at CIP with Potato Farming Systems in the Andes: Evolution and Prospects
(2019) Oscar Ortiz; Graham Thiele; Rebecca Nelson; Jeffery W. Bentley
Participatory Research (PR) at the International Potato Center (CIP) included seven major experiences. (1) Farmer-back-to-farmer in the 1970s pioneered the idea of working with farmers to identify their needs, propose solutions, and explain the underlying scientific concepts. The ideas were of great influence at CIP and beyond. (2) With integrated pest management (IPM) pilot areas in the early 1990s, entomologists and social scientists developed technologies with farmers in Peru and other countries to control insect pests. Households that adopted just some of the techniques enjoyed high economic returns, and this showed the importance of IPM specialists, social scientists, and farmers working together. (3) Farmer field school (FFS) was adapted for participatory research in the 2000s. Farmers learned that late blight was caused by a microorganism, while testing resistant varieties and fungicides, and researchers took into account more specifically farmer knowledge for training and PR purposes. (4) CIP used participatory varietal selection (PVS) after 2004 to form consortia of farmers, local government, NGOs, and research. Farmers' preferences were disaggregated by gender. Selection criteria of other market actors were included, and new varieties were released, showing the importance of combining farmer and researcher knowledge in this process. (5) Participatory approaches to develop native potato variety value chains. After 2000, CIP used the PMCA (participatory market chain analysis) and stakeholder platforms to improve smallholders' access to markets. PMCA brought farmers and other market actors together to form stakeholder platforms which created market innovations, including
Plant health clinics in Bolivia 2000—2009: operations and preliminary results
(Springer Science+Business Media, 2009) Jeffery W. Bentley; E. Boa; Solveig Danielsen; Pablo Franco; Olivia Antezana; Bertho Villarroel; Henry Rodríguez; Jhon Ferrrufino; Javier Franco; René Pereira
Recovering from quinoa: regenerative agricultural research in Bolivia
(Taylor & Francis, 2022) Alejandro Bonifacio; Genaro Aroni; Milton Villca; Jeffery W. Bentley
Our objective was to research ways to introduce regenerative agriculture into the fragile landscape of the Southern Altiplano of Bolivia. The quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) boom (2010–2014) had stimulated farmers to clear large areas of native vegetation: a climax community of shrubs, grasses and cacti. Most fields were soon abandoned, and native plants did not grow back spontaneously. Wind was rapidly eroding the sandy soils. Botanical exploration, informed by local knowledge, discovered species and ecotypes of wild plants, especially shrubs, legumes, grasses and cacti that could be grown as intercrops and as live barriers to control erosion. These plants were evaluated in farmers' fields, using participatory research. New varieties of quinoa were developed by conventional plant breeding. Researchers learned to grow wild shrubs and grasses in live barriers, to control soil erosion. Wild, native lupines were cultivated for the first time, to use as cover crops. Native cacti were grown in nurseries to encourage farmers to plant them near fields. The new quinoa varieties were better adapted to the local environment. We conclude that this innovative, broad-spectrum research agenda is a kind of plant breeding at the level of the whole landscape. These multiple lines of research are important for developing a diverse, integrated, regenerative agriculture.
Sharing ideas between cultures with videos
(Taylor & Francis, 2011) Jeffery W. Bentley; Paul Van Mele
Civil servants, agricultural researchers, extension people and media experts often think that videos for farmers need to be filmed locally, so that the audience identifies with the actors. But this is not so. Farmers in southwestern and northern Nigeria reacted to videos on rice seed health (made in Bangladesh), on parboiling (filmed in Benin) and rice cultivation (from Mali). The farmers criticized the videos freely, but their remarks were about the technical pros and cons of the technologies presented in the videos. The farmers had no preference for watching videos featuring West African or Bangladeshi actors. The farmers only cared about the technical content of the film. This is an important, practical conclusion, because it is much easier and cheaper to dub a film into a second language than to film it over again.
Special report
(Springer Science+Business Media, 2001) E. Boa; Jeffery W. Bentley; John Stonehouse
Travelling Companions: Emerging Diseases of People, Animals and Plants Along the Malawi-Mozambique Border
(Springer Science+Business Media, 2012) Jeffery W. Bentley; Mike Robson; Bright B. Sibale; Edwin Nkhulungo; Yolice Tembo; Fransisca Munthali
Unspoken demands for farm technology
(Taylor & Francis, 2007) Jeffery W. Bentley; Claudio Ríos-Velasco; F.. M. Rodriguez; Rolando Oros; Rubén Botello; M. Webb; A. Devaux; Graham Thiele
For three years in Bolivia (2002–2005) the INNOVA Project finished researching several technologies for sustainable agriculture, started by earlier DFID-funded projects. Before INNOVA started critics suggested that these technologies should be discarded in favour of a demand survey. Instead, INNOVA kept the existing technologies, but judged the demand for them with several methods (CIAL, sondeo technology fair, and others). INNOVA found that there was demand for some of the technologies, but that a survey would have missed much of the demand, which is implicit. That is, people are not initially aware of all their problems or of all the possible solutions. Over the years, farmers made more specific, sophisticated demands on the technologies, which evolved as a result. Demand and supply of farm technology are like two sides of an unfolding conversation.