Peter Reason takes on role of expert witness at farmer's jury in India
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Professor Peter Reason, Professor of Action Research Practice in the School of Management, was invited to India recently to take part in Raita Teerpu, the first ever ‘citizen’s jury’ on the orientation of contemporary agricultural research.
The Raita Teerpu, which translates as ‘farmers’ verdict’, took place in Karnataka in December 2009 and was modelled on citizen jury processes that take place in many parts of the world.
A form of deliberative democracy, citizen’s juries are a way of making democracy accessible to those people who are normally excluded from mainstream democratic processes. The event provide a forum for small farmers, both women and men from marginalized communities including Dalits and Adivasi people, to come together to assess the relevance of current agricultural research to their situation and make proposals for change.
The jury quizzed a number of agricultural scientists, social science researchers, civil society activists, farmers and farmer leaders, pastoralists and consumer activists on the theme of Democratisation of Agricultural Research.
Professor Reason’s role as expert witness was to offer a critique of orthodox scientific research and to describe participatory research as an alternative.
The final verdict was addressed to the government, policy makers, universities and agricultural scientists. The jury argued that current research was oriented toward agribusiness and favoured large scale and high input agriculture. There is therefore a great need for pro-farmer agricultural research that would recognize the particular challenges facing small farmers who were wished to continue to work their land intensively and using more traditional small scale farming practices
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