DEFINITIONS

Information (relating to natural resources) has been defined as “patterned data allowing us to give meaning to the environment” (Röling and Engel, 1991).

Technologies refer to the application of such information to the activities of human goals, either in the form of hardware (tools, equipment, machines), or as software (knowledge, experience, skills).

Information and technology may be derived from scientific research, or from farmers’ own experimentation.

Promotion is the activity of making potential users aware of the information or technology, and increasing its accessibility.

Dissemination is the act of distributing information to various audiences in forms appropriate to their needs. Dissemination aims to increase the wider awareness of research products and, in turn, to enhance the speed of up-take, i.e. the use of research products.

Uptake is the application of the information or technology by users. There are two basic categories: ‘end users’, which in this case include farmers and others (individuals, households, communities) who engage in grain storage; and, ‘intermediate users’, who may use the research findings to produce information, technology and products for end-users, including those needed to create a favourable institutional/ policy environment for uptake (e.g. service providers, policy actors, private sector suppliers, educators and researchers).

Pathway for dissemination or up-take refer to the routes or channels by which information and technologies reach the ‘users’. Pathways are multiple amd complex, especially with respect to reaching poor people and responding to their needs.

Stakeholders are considered to include all those who affect and/or are affected by the policies, decisions and actions of a given system (Grimble et al, 1995). This definition should alert us to the possibility that stakeholders in a given venture, may not necessarily share the same interest (e.g. grain protectant manufacturers are both stakeholders in post-harvest storage issues and competitors).

Scaling-up aims to provide 'more quality benefits to more people over a wide geographical area more quickly, more equitably and more lastingly' (IIRR, 2000 in Gundel et al., 2001).