Keywords :

DMC adoption in developing countries

DMC techniques have mainly been adopted over the last three decades in South and North America and Australia, where they have emerged independently from national research and extension systems. These technical changes are harder to implement in developing countries because of the nature of most of their agricultural enterprises: small farms, subsistence strategies, limited risk-taking, limited resources, and the role of community exchanges. In these situations, the strategy should thus be to enhance potential adopters’ access to other forms of capital (land, financial, human/social) in addition to technical capital, along with interventions in the spatial and economic environment of farms—land management and commodity chains.

The example of Alaotra Lake, the main area of DMC adoption in Madagascar, is interesting for several reasons. Almost 1 500 farmers are currently implementing DMC in an area of 1 200 ha. The adopted systems incorporate local crops at different intensification levels, which can be adjusted according to farmers’ capacities and objectives. Farmers’ organizations are structured and have gradually been interacting with different stakeholders involved in agricultural production: microfinance institutions, banks, private operators, decentralized local authorities, and NGOs. In Laos, family farms differ by the fact that they are closely connected to the private sector —especially marketing and service supply companies. Because of this specific feature, a short-term development approach, combining regional/territorial with commodity chains levels, is possible. In the province of Xayabouri, where there is high pressure on natural resources (increased demand for raw materials from Thai agroindustries), over 1 600 farms currently implement DMC in a total area of around 2 000 ha.

Innovation processes observed in these two settings are specific responses to farmers’ ‘risk management’ strategies. They indicate that it is possible, with a tailored method, to foster sustainable adoption of DMCs on low-resource family farms.