ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a chronological model of farming systems research activities to illustrate how sensitivity to gender consistently helps programs benefit smallholders. Since 1982, Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agropecuarias and scientists from Cornell have been collaborating on integrated, multi-disciplinary farming systems research in two zones of Ecuador with contrasting crops, ecology, and social organization. The chapter shows that improving the design and conduct of farming systems research. Research in production or Programa de Investigacion en Produccion (PIP) activities usually begins at the initiative of a commodity program wishing to evaluate promising technological alternatives under smallholder conditions. The evaluation of technology under smallholder conditions has effectively required that the PIP program initiate technology transfer. In semiproletarian households, men who are engaged in seasonal wage labor are likely to be absent from the farmstead during the week. In the Ecuadorian context, semiproletarian households present tractable problems.
