Abstract:

Agricultural education that facilitates and cultivates formal and informal knowledge flows is increasingly important to promote productivity and sustainability of agricultural and rural development. Existing rural development, from a developmentalist perspective, has transformed, in both theoretical and practical terms, from a top-down to participatory and demand-driven approach. Such alternative thinking and methods however are greatly practiced under a single project or program and in dealing with one specialised subject or development area of practice. In an expanded tempo-spatial frame, knowledge diffusion has to go from linear knowledge transactions to a systemic framework to include multiple sources and heterogeneous recipients of knowledge, which then, in the context of knowledge growth and interactions between knowledge-worlds, needs to take into consideration knowledge collision and knowledge colligation. In this direction was the present research designed.

This research adopted the Mekong Delta (MD), the largest and most productive agriculture region in Vietnam as a case study. Data collected from one-year field research in the MD, particularly ten farmer’s focus group discussions (FGD) and relevant in-depth interviews, were used for this analysis. Each approximately two-hour FGD consisted of two sessions where farmers were invited first to identify and rank their sources of knowledge related to their agricultural and rural development activities, and later on, to discuss sustainable agriculture concepts and practices they were engaged in. FGDs including geography, state support and farming system differentiated cohorts demonstrate, although agricultural television programs are in most cases highly rated, varied priorities of knowledge sources, covering integrated formalised and social learning structures, devices and spaces and involved actors from different knowledge-worlds. On this background, knowledge collision is discussed in the light of two cases: pesticide application (academic versus corporate recommendations) and rice seeding (extensionists’ versus farmers’ experience). And finally, colligated knowledge is scrutinised in the growth of technological design endeavours associated with integrated pest management (IPM) and sustainable agriculture.

The paper highlights that in the course of concentrated introduction of new knowledge and technologies to the diverse rural community, even with novel approaches, it is equally important that agricultural extension and education professionals frequently “step back” and tackle, with farmers, conflicts and unassociated abundance of knowledge that farmers encounter. Such criticism and reconstruction of farmer’s present understanding and practice of “old” knowledge can help solve learning stuckness, consolidate practical application and create new knowledge as well. As a knowledge management implication, conflicted and colligated knowledge should be managed within cycles of new knowledge generation. It is this direction that invites further research.

Keywords:

Agricultural education, knowledge colligation, knowledge collision, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.