Economics and the disign of Small Farmer technology.

The "small farmer" or "peasant farmer" is an important client for new technology developed for the purpose of increasing basic food production and improving human welfare in the less developed countries of the world. While statistics may vary depending on the definition of a small farmer, it is clear that the major production of basic food crops in most tropical developing countries is achieved on relatively small farms by people with very limited capital resources. That this type of producer has over the centuries managed to feed self and family, in spite of the vagaries of climate and competition from insects and microorganisms, testifies to an astute understanding of the environment. This has enabled development of complex multiple-cropping systems to provide a consistent supply of food for the farm family in the face

of severe hazards and constraints. Yet small farmers have been much maligned. Their systems of farming are often referred to as "primitive" and they are considered backward, con servative, and lazy because of slowness or reluctance to follow advice of exten sion agents. We must recognize that, although they may be illiterate, they are not stupid and, although education may be limited, they are often shrewd in knowing what is profitable and what is not. Former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman once remarked that he had encountered many farmers who could not read-but none who could not count.

Small farmers have often been right in questioning whether technology developed and tested only on experiment stations would work under local operating conditions. They have instinctively realized the unacceptability of taking the large financial and social risks involved when new practices have not been sufficiently tested under existing conditions, when markets are uncertain, and when "cheap food" pricing policies do not provide sufficient incentives. Yet the experience of the Green Revolution in Asia has taught us that when products of appropriate research make new techniques substantial ly more profitable than traditional methods, and when a remunerative rela tionship between input and product prices exists, the small farmer will adopt these practices with amazing agility.