Looking to the future by digging up the past – capturing and disseminating tacit knowledge

Abstract

In the past, it was customary for the findings of agricultural research to be packaged into extension materials, and extended to farmers via the extension workers. In the Pacific, the degrading of government-led extension and advisory has happened at the same time as a decline in print publications. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of social media initiatives all intended to better communicate with the public, among which are the farmers. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that this is not helping the farmers. There is similarly a lack of evidence that this is equipping extension workers with a good knowledge base, and there is also the loss of knowledge and experience as researchers and extension officers age retire. No attempt has been made to capture what is called ‘tacit knowledge’: information and knowledge known to an individual by virtue of their experience, lessons learned and knowledge gained, the loss of which is guaranteed to ensure that lessons learned are lost, and the wheel is reinvented.

To address these issues, the author has been involved in two activities in Solomon Islands. In the first activity, a procedure was proposed to try and use the collective wisdom of a group of researchers and technical extension people, in the form of a writeshop to put together extension fact sheets. The focus was on capturing content, irrespective of its eventual packaging. The second activity was the preparation of a manual to address severe problems in the country with cocoa contamination. In...