The outputs of the DDPA Themes are not cookie-cutter solutions. Those have been tried in the past, and mostly failed. Integrated ecosystems are complex; the same solution is unlikely to work in exactly the same way in many places. However, the concepts and principles that emerge from research can be valuable in many different places, once they are adapted to the local setting.

This is why the DDPA creates tools, models, processes and prototype technologies instead of one-size-fits-all products. Examples of these 'customizable products' include, for example:

• Principles and options for sustainable watershed development;

• Choices of new crops, crop products and livestock technologies suitable for different conditions;

• Ways to engage the participation of local, district and national constituencies in land use management decisions;

• Ways to integrate farmer participation in biotechnological plant breeding; and

• Options that govern tradeoffs in land-use policy decisions.

But doesn't this make the DDPA results too complicated for practical use? Not if they are shared in new ways with partners. Rather than the former top-down approach, in which land users were simply told what to do, the DDPA approach is participatory. It engages farmers, communities and governments in testing and refining these customizable products in their own settings.

Here are examples of how participatory plant breeding revolutionizes the creation and adoption of new plant varieties in the West Asia-North Africa region and in India. Read more about this topic in Witcombe et al. (1998) listed below.

Such stakeholder participation delivers powerful benefits. The stakeholders become part of the solution, not just passive recipients. When land users are empowered in this manner, they buy into the process. They invest their own skills and expertise in improving the solutions for their own needs and conditions. This gives them the motivation and self-confidence to continue to evolve their solutions as needs and conditions change.

As stakeholders become passionate advocates for their solutions, they share them with others. The DDPA deliberately fosters this knowledge-sharing so that lessons learned in one village, province, country or region also benefit others elsewhere.

Through these participatory dynamics, the DDPA's work creates a ripple effect of impact that reaches far beyond, and lasts far longer than in past approaches to research-for-development. For examples of how farmer-to-farmer sharing achieves buy-in and spreads impacts far and wide, see this link; more cases are described in the reference by Reij and Waters-Bayer listed below.

References

Witcombe, J. R., Virk, D. S. and Farrington, J. (eds.) 1998. Seeds of Choice. Making the Most of New Varieties for Small Farmers. New Delhi, India: Oxford & IBH.