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Suggested Citation:"7 Change and Drivers." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 2014. Culture Matters: International Research Collaboration in a Changing World: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18849.
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Page 41
Suggested Citation:"7 Change and Drivers." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 2014. Culture Matters: International Research Collaboration in a Changing World: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18849.
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Page 42
Suggested Citation:"7 Change and Drivers." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 2014. Culture Matters: International Research Collaboration in a Changing World: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18849.
×
Page 43
Suggested Citation:"7 Change and Drivers." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 2014. Culture Matters: International Research Collaboration in a Changing World: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18849.
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Page 44

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

7    Change and Drivers    In  the  workshop’s  final  plenary  session  moderated  by  Lida  Anestidou,  Senior Program Officer at the National Academies, Robert Bertram, Director  of the Office of Agricultural Research Policy in Technology at the U.S. Agency  for International Development, addressed the following questions:     What is an example of an area where international research collabora‐ tions are changing?   Which cultural issues have been reasonably well addressed?   Which aspects of culture require additional attention?   What motivates people to get together to do research?    7.1 CULTURE IN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH    Presenter: Robert Bertram, Director of the Office of Agricultural Research  Policy in Technology at the U.S. Agency for International Development    A major challenge facing the world is to feed the almost one billion peo‐ ple who suffer from chronic hunger and to do so in the face of a rising global  population that is expected to reach nine billion by 2050. To meet this demand,  food production will have to increase by 70 percent. President Obama’s Feed  the Future Initiative aims to foster the developments that are needed to enable  that  large  of  an  increase  in  food  production,  particularly  in  the  developing  world.  This  initiative,  explained  Robert  Bertram  is  led  by  the  U.S.  Agency  for  International  Development  (USAID)  and  it  involves  the  State  Department,  the  U.S.  Department  of  Agriculture,  the  Millennium  Challenge  Corporation,  and  other U.S. agencies, but he noted that while USAID is the lead U.S. agency, the  initiative  is  in  fact  country‐led.  “We  focus  very  much  on  country  ownership,  which  means  if  our  partner  countries  don’t  think  it’s  worth  investing  in,  we  probably shouldn’t think it is worth investing in either.”   41 

42                   Culture Matters: International Research Collaboration in a Changing World  While characterizing this country‐led focus as an important advance in in‐ ternational development aid, Bertram acknowledged that it comes with its own  set  of  challenges,  many  of  which  are  cultural  and  communications  related.  “There  are  plenty  of  countries  that  are  committed  to  food  security  improve‐ ments  that  are  not  very  committed  to  talking  to  their  civil  societies  or  their  private  sector,  for  example,”  he  explained.  USAID’s  approach  is  to  develop  technologies  and  policies  that  reflect  those  country  priorities,  but  to  also  en‐ gage civil society and the private sector in as nonthreatening a way as possible.  This  approach  received  a  major  boost  when  President  Obama  hosted  leaders  from Africa and the G8 at Camp David in 2012 and convinced them to institu‐ tionalize  the  policy  changes  that  governments  could  make  to  unleash  private  investment in African agriculture.   Feed the Future, Bertram explained, takes what USAID calls a value chain  approach centered around farmers and households. In this model, the farmer is  both  a  consumer  of  research  and  supplies  and  a  producer  that  sends  crops,  livestock,  and  forage  into  the  market.  This  approach  also  acknowledges  that  small  landholders  will  continue  to  play  an  important  if  not  dominant  role  in  agriculture  in  Africa  and  Asia  for  the  foreseeable  future.  “Our  focus  is  to  em‐ power the small holders,” said Bertram. He added that this value chain forces  researchers  to  understand  some  of  the  social  and  cultural  factors  that  come  into play when trying to get new technology adopted and to include research  on post‐harvest and market factors when planning a project for a specific coun‐ try or region.   Considering  all  of  these  factors  when  creating  a  research  initiative  can  lead  to  some  innovative  ways  of  working  with  communities  to  improve  what  they already know how to do, noted Bertram. In Mali, for example, researchers  showed communities that if they put metal roofs on their already existing grain  storage  bins  and  used  a  tarp  to  keep  the  grain  clean,  they  could  double  the  value of that grain in the market just by keeping it dry and free from pests.    Regarding culture, it is important to understand the difference between  farm  practices  that  are  passed  on  from  generation  to  generation  as  part  of  a  local culture and those that are passed along because they make agronomic or  economic  sense.  Years  ago,  Bertram  said,  when  Americans  went  overseas  to  help develop agriculture, they would find people who were intercropping corns  and beans and bananas and other crops. The conclusion was that this was just  an outmoded practice that was a hold‐over of what anthropologists would call  cultural  practices,  i.e.,  people  did  it  just  because  their  grandparents  did  it.  It  turns  out,  though,  that  this  kind  of  intercropping  in  many  environments  can  actually lead to both better management and higher productivity of the land.  “We  had  this  period  where  we  were  coming  to  grips  with  a  system  that  is  a  different  paradigm  than  our  own,”  said  Bertram.  “Our  technical  advisors  now  accept the fact that things such as intercropping are relevant.” 

Change and Drivers  43  This type of mind shift is important, said Bertram, because it enables the  application  of  technology  to  the  farming  practices  of  the  small  holder  to  in‐ crease production today, while the next generation of technologies and farm‐ ing practices are developed and introduced to produce the bigger increases in  food production that will be needed to double global food production over the  next  three  to  four  decades.  What  will  be  needed  is  what  Bertram  called  sus‐ tainable intensification, approaches that reflect local knowledge and practices  while  improving  efficiency  through  technological  advances  that  fit  into  local  production systems and feed into local markets. The way he envisions this hap‐ pening is that researchers will develop a large number of new technologies that  will  be  tested  in  various  communities.  The  most  promising  interventions  will  stabilize  into  a  dominant  innovation  design  that  then  interacts  with  the  local  cultures and markets to produce the kind of larger changes that will meet fu‐ ture food demands.  Conservation and environmental preservation also work into this model,  and  what  is  needed  here  is  a  fine‐grained  anthropological  and  ethnographic  analysis to understand factors such as patronage networks, power and authori‐ ty  relationships,  the  ways  in  which  market  systems  are  linked  to  governance,  and the whole issue of tenure, access to, and ownership of land and resources.  “By and large, we think of land as a private good, but in most cases in the de‐ veloping world the issue isn’t about ownership as it is about access to the land  and tenure,” said Bertram. “When tenure is addressed, really great things can  happen.”  Tenure  in  this  context  refers  to  the  rights  associated  with  the  trees  and their products (Fortman, 1985). In many cases tree tenure is distinct from  land rights and/or land ownership.   As an example, Bertram noted that in Niger, Senegal, Mali, and Burkina  Faso, a change in tree tenure that moved away from the colonial system to one  that  recognized  local  authority  over  trees  triggered  a  massive  replanting  of  trees that transformed over six million acres of land that had been decimated  by drought in the 1980s. Livestock and crop production have risen markedly in  this region, as has biomass production, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity.  “There  were  some  improved  technologies  at  work  here,  too,  but  it  all  traces  back  to  the  change  in  culture  going  back  to  tree  tenure,”  said  Bertram.  One  unexpected  result  of  this  positive  change  was  that  as  the  land’s  fertility  re‐ turned, men tried to take the land back from women. “There was work through  the existing authority structures in the villages to protect women’s assets and  their rights to that land,” he added.  Gender is an important cultural issue that cuts across USAID’s programs,  and one of the most important factors for success has been to improve the role  of  women  as economic  actors  and  leaders  in communities.  Women  play  such  an important role in these programs that USAID has developed a Women’s Em‐ powerment  in  Agriculture  Index  that  looks  at  household  decision  making;  ac‐

44                   Culture Matters: International Research Collaboration in a Changing World  cess to capital, credit, and land; having an adequate income to feed the family;  access to leadership roles in the community; and the division of labor time be‐ tween men and women. Bertram said that when scores on this index increase,  productivity increases. “We know that in some cases, women are actually bet‐ ter  recipients of  agricultural  information.  They  are  more  likely  to  follow  prac‐ tices and more likely to follow through and get better results,” he explained.   USAID also believes that women need to play a more prominent role in  research  as  well  as  in  the  field  and  it  has  several  programs  aimed  at  getting  women, as well as men, into U.S. research laboratories. Bertram believes this is  one  of  the  most  important  investments  that  the  agency  has  made  because  these  individuals  go  back  to  their  home  countries  and  become  leaders.  They  also  learn  about  the  culture  of  research  in  the  United  States,  which  is  much  more  democratic  and  less  hierarchical  than  in  most  parts  of  the  world,  and  then take those cultural lessons back to their home institutions.     REFERENCE    Louise Fortman. 1985. The tree tenure factor in agroforestry with particular reference to  Africa. Agroforestry Systems 2(4):229‐251. 

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In an increasingly interconnected world, science and technology research often transects international boundaries and involves researchers from multiple nations. This paradigm provides both new opportunities and new challenges. As science and technology capabilities grow around the world, United States-based organizations are finding that international collaborations and partnerships provide unique opportunities to enhance research and training. At the same time, enhancing international collaboration requires recognition of differences in culture, legitimate national security needs, and critical needs in education and training.

Culture Matters is the summary of a workshop convened by the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR) in July 2013 to address how culture and cultural perception influence and impact the process by which research agreements are made and negotiated across international boundaries. In this workshop, "Culture Matters: An Approach to International Research Agreements", representatives from around the world and from GUIRR's three constituent sectors - government, university, and industry - gathered to provide input into four specific meeting tracks or domains. The tracks focused on research and agreements affecting or involving people/human subjects; environmental and natural resources; science, engineering, and manufacturing; and agriculture and animal issues. This report examines each of these domains and the role that culture and cultural expectations may have in the forging and implementation of international research agreements.

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