Potential farmer contributions to the design process: Indications from Indonesia

The paper argues that conventional irrigation design processes rely heavily on predetermined design criteria, often without allowing for interactions with farmers and revising of criteria during implementation. Six cases from a tertiary development project in North Sulawesi, Indonesia are described, where farmers altered what had been designed and constructed by contracting and agency engineers. Through field inspections and farmer interviews, the farmers' alternative set of design criteria was elicited to explain why the farmers changed what had been constructed. A total of 27 cases are analyzed to show the relative importance of:

–	farmer criteria which are compatible with project criteria but which draw on local knowledge of the environment,
–	farmer criteria which were additional to project criteria and
–	farmer criteria which were incompatible with project criteria.
–	Some mechanisms are suggested for how to incorporate into the design process local knowledge, interactive learning and flexibility.