Tables rondes paysans-chercheurs: Simples échanges ou vrais débats?

Abstract

The international scientific conference on genetic resource management in savanna zones of West Africa, organized in Bamako from 15 to 18 May 2007, attracted an audience of researchers and farmers (a third of the audience) accompanied by NGO technicians. Three roundtables were organized. The aims were to give the floor to the producers by encouraging exchanges and differing points of view between the members of the audience to brainstorm learning around three themes. This paper examines the major points around which the interventions were organized in three parts. The first concerns the methodology and depicts the working method used during the three roundtables. In the second, the text reports the farmers' thought-provoking assertions on the distance they had covered over the last few years, their position as active partners. The researchers' questions about participatory plant breeding challenges are then treated as are questions about the farmers' real role in the agrobiodiversity management. The cross-exchanges on learning's contribution to building new knowledge for biodiversity management approached this notion not from a methodological point of view but rather by looking at aspects of its meaning. The development of learning leads to a re-thinking of the distribution of functions, roles and tasks in a partnership relationship. The third part discusses the real scope of these roundtables and the resources to be implemented in the future to progress from the exchange of ideas to sessions of real debate.