Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi

There is need for an interdisciplinary effort which includes social scientists in planning and designing adaptive agricultural research. The need is founded on the fact that farmers take decisions on what to produce, how much of it to produce and how to produce it in the light of the economic circumstances in which they find themselves. The full set of these circumstances should be brought to bear in research design if experimental programmes are to produce the appropriate, improved technology which is the key to broad based agricultural development. The paper sets out an interdisciplinary procedural sequence for research orientation and experimental design in which the agricultural scientist is the expert in crop improvement and the micro-economist the expert in farmers’ circumstances, and the result of which is a more relevant, effective research effort.