N3: On targeting and scaling out

Notenbaert, An, 2009. Project Proposal. Challenge Program on Water and Food, Colombo, Sri Lanka

This project is about matching technologies (or whole strategies) with environments. It has been shown that “blanket” RMS are often inappropriate. One size does not, as they say, fit all. Strategies for upper slopes are likely to be different than those for lower slopes. The suitability of technologies may be influenced by altitude, rainfall patterns, landscape position, soil type, access to input and product markets, crop-livestock interactions, the extent of community integration, the attitudes of local authorities, the presence of NGOs and other develop organizations – and many other factors. This project will aim to identify the conditions – biophysical and institutional – that favour the use of particular sets of practices, then scan the landscape to find out where else these conditions prevail. That is, this project will help identify the “conditionality” of recommendations. Sometimes these conditions may be amenable to mapping, as when altitude is a determining factor. Some the conditions will be difficult or impossible to map, as when community integration is a determining factor.