Jules Pretty. 1998. Participatory Learning for Integrated Farming 
In: Integrated Bio-Systems in Zero Emissions Applications.
Proceedings of the Internet Conference on Integrated Biosystems.
Eds: Eng-Leong Foo & Tarcisio Della Senta. 1998 http://www.ias.unu.edu/proceedings/icibs/jules
 
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About the Author 

Dr. Jules N. Pretty 
Director, Centre for Environment and Society,  
John Tabor Labs 
University of Essex, UK.  
Email: jpretty@essex.ac.uk
 
Dr. Jules Pretty is currently the director of the Centre for Environment and Society (CES) at the University of Essex. He is a founding member of the Agricultural Reform Group and the Neighbourhood Think Tank, a trustee for the Farmers World Network and The Pesticides Trust, editorial advisor to various journals, and member of the Institute of Biology and British Agricultural History Society. The CES at the University of Essex is a trans-disciplinary research centre that draws on the expertise of internationally renowned departments and research centres in the University, including Accounting and Financial Management, Biological Sciences, the Centre for Micro-Social Change, Economics, Government, Law, Mathematics, Sociology, and the associate Writtle College. The current activities of the Centre include river basin and estuary management, climate change, participation and deliberative democracy, environmental security, agricultural and food systems, and community-based management of natural resources.  

Jules Pretty is also a book writer and his most recent book "The Living Land" focuses entirely on agriculture, conservation and food system issues in Europe, with a particular focus on the UK.  

Dr. Jules Pretty was director (1989-1997) of the Sustainable Agriculture Programme at the International Institute for Environment and Development. The Programme was engaged in a wide range of collaborative research, training and outreach programmes, mainly in countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Major projects included initiatives that focused on natural and social capital development in rural communities. These include the Policies that Work for Sustainable Agriculture project, the New Horizons: Impacts of Watershed Development project; the Hidden Harvest project that documented and measured the value of wild foods and natural capital; and the Rural People's Knowledge project. The Programme was engaged in methodological development of new participatory approaches for community development and economic valuation. Jules Pretty's paper provides interesting topics for discussion and debate on the schools of thoughts on agricultural development, what is sustainable agriculture and its impacts, the importance of participation by the people in development projects, alternative systems in participatory learning and methods.
Abstract
Increasing human population will require substantial increases in food production, which is well understood. However, it is less appreciated that to deliver such increases is not only a matter of availability of physical re-sources as inputs in the process of production, but - as important - of conducive schools of thought in science and approaches to learning. The paper is based on the assumption that agricultural development will have to be sustainable (in the terms defined in the paper) and provides recent evidence of impact achieved. Experience demonstrates participation by people is a critical condition for success in sustainable agricultural development and interest in application of participatory approaches is growing. Assuming the meaning of sustainability encompasses activities spread beyond a project in space and time, participation requires collective analyses by inter-disciplinary and intersectoral teams, and even a researcher working alone must cooperate closely with local people.  
 The paper goes on to discuss conditions for scaling-up of sustainable agriculture. Principal among these are farmers' capacity to innovate and it is the process, which sustains this capacity which is important and much less specific technologies. A new professional able to select methodologies according to needs and work in multidisciplinary teams and not afraid of interaction with non-scientific people will facilitate spread of sustainable agriculture and so will an institutionalisation of these approaches.   

 Key words: Learning, agriculture, sustainable, participatory, professionalism.