IFSA Seminar for May 2014

Title: Bridging farmers and scientists in rice research for technology development and dissemination: Experiences and lessons learned

Dr. Thelma Paris
Social Scientist-Gender Specialist

Abstract: Smallholder rice farmers in Asia, particularly those living in unfavorable rice environments allocate their scarce resources such land, labor and capital to ensure food security of their household members, especially of their children. Despite the availability of rice and rice-related technologies, farmers’ adoption of these technologies particularly knowledge-intensive technologies, remain low. Thus there is a need to understand farmers’ constraints to adoption and how these constraints can be overcome as well as develop strategies or research design which involves farmer participation. In my presentation, I will share my efforts (research and training) efforts as well as failures and successes, as a social scientist, in bridging farmers and scientists and in ensuring that rice science benefit the target clients – poor rice farming communities, including men and women.

About the Speaker:
Thelma Paris spent her professional career, spanning, nearly 40 years, in IRRI from a research assistant to an accomplished social scientist within the CGIAR science community. Thelma is well-known in gender studies. Her research on the role of women in rice farming and the improvement of their livelihoods through access to technologies and associated crop management practices provided IRRI scientists a valuable insight on technology development and dissemination.
As a former National Recruited Staff, she was an active member and officer of IFSAN (formerly IJR). In recognition of her outstanding contribution to socioeconomic research, she has received many awards, including the CGIAR Excellence Science Award for Outstanding Local Professional ; Honorary Fellow Award, Crop Science Society of the Philippines, Gintong Ani from the IJR and other local and international awards. She has long-term Abstract (Overview of the presentation). She authored and co-authored more than 150 publications. Many of her publications are co-authored with agricultural engineers, plant breeders and agronomists.