PETRRA’s emerging values-based management approach PETRRA identified, developed, and defined various cross-cutting issues, including poverty focus, demand-led research, participation, partnership, gender, linkage and network, and competition in research management. These formed the value base of the project and played a crucial role in conceptualising and developing PETRRA’s agenda. Values were defined as central beliefs and purposes of the society – in this case the organisation or the project (Jary and Jary 1991). PETRRA strived for best practice in the following respects. . Working with resource-poor farmers to address poverty. . Conducting research as per demand and priority of the resource-poor farmers. . Conducting, sharing, and evaluating research with both men and women members of resource-poor households. . Conducting research that ensured participation of resource-poor men and women in all stages of the project cycle: planning, designing, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. . Conducting research by establishing appropriate and effective partnership of agencies to ensure the use of pro-poor technology, dissemination methods, and policy. . Ensuring that research outputs were sustained through linkage and network development, with appropriate agencies, to ensure that the interests of the poor were represented. . Communicating effectively with farmers and policy makers to disseminate, up-scale, and consolidate learning. . Using a competitive process as a way of identifying competent suppliers of agricultural R&D to facilitate the achievement of pro-poor outcomes.
Institutionalising values-based research The scope of the initial proposal was rather limited, but that did not prevent the project from becoming innovative. In a way it allowed the project to blossom naturally. The donor and host agencies also allowed the project to evolve: they were not rigid, but rather appreciative of new ideas and innovations. The PMU was open-minded and strove to be responsive to the needs of resource-poor farmers. It initiated ideas, included new outputs, adjusted project purpose, invited and entertained new ideas from project stakeholders and outsiders, reviewed suggestions, and reacted according to the situation. It also exercised the freedom to be neutral, even towards its own organisation, IRRI.
Although the project recognised and brought into practice various values, a lot could still be done to establish these values within agricultural research institutes like IRRI and BRRI, and to identify appropriate ways to institutionalise them in the overall R&D system. Some researchers emerged as ‘champions’ promoting values, but the extent to which this learning carried over into day-to-day work beyond the specific sub-project varied. To establish a culture that embraces values within a project is not enough: those values need to be embedded in the agencies, so that the praxis continues. International organisations like IRRI have the scope to influence national agricultural research systems (NARS) in rice-producing developing countries. Through PETRRA, IRRI showed that it can facilitate and establish an effective values-based research culture. Various examples show PETRRA’s continued impact. The World Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) decided to jointly support the National Agricultural Technology Project, with an estimated grant of US$ 84.5 million (BARC 2007). PETRRA values such as a competitive grant system, demand-led research and extension, poverty focus, and partnership are included. Immediately after the project ended, DFID agreed to establish a Projukti (technology) Foundation in Bangladesh that would reflect PETRRA values – but not much progress was made, as the government did not agree to make it a body independent of government control.
Some project partners acquired grants from the CGIAR Challenge Program for Water and Food to follow up on their successful PETRRA research. The two projects provide IRRI with further experience to consolidate and internalise values-based research. PETRRA’s experiences with extension methods research were documented in the book Innovations in Rural Extension – Case Studies from Bangladesh (Van Mele et al. 2005). In his review of the book, Robert Chambers commented: ‘if any donor agency is looking for a cost-effective investment, it would be hard to do better than to provide the means to make this book cheap and accessible, and to send a great many copies with a covering letter to those concerned with agricultural research and extension policy and practice around the world’ (Chambers 2007: 36). The ‘Focal Area’ concept developed during PETRRA is now commonly used by government and non-government organisations to jointly address poverty in northern Bangladesh. Partners formerly involved in extension-methods research continue to expand their activities in-country (for example, farmer-oriented seed models) and across South Asia (for example, women-oriented video production). BRRI continues to develop the Bangladeshi version of the rice knowledge bank (www.knowledgebank-brri.org), which is focused on semi-literate farmers and extension workers. These are but a few examples.