From novice to expert: agroecological competences of children orphaned by AIDS compared to non-orphans in Benin

AIDS has created a new category of vulnerable rural African household because its impact reduces food production and livelihood viability and creates a spiral of food decline [1‐3]. This undermining of rural livelihoods is due to reductions in resources. Two of these farming resources, labor and knowledge, are interlinked in the case of parental death for rural children in Africa [2, 4]. Both the loss of productive adult family farm labor and impairment in the intergenerational transfer of traditional food production knowledge are noted as core impacts of the pandemic that lead to more child labor, a greater emphasis on producing to meet food consumption needs, loss of role models for the young to learn from, reduction in the body of traditional knowledge, and loss of the experienced hand of parent as teacher of farming knowledge [4]. Bell et al. [5] project that a breakdown in the transmission of traditional knowledge from one generation to the next leading to an erosion of the stock of human capital can have devastating economic effects and lead to economic collapse of nations severely affected by the HIV pandemic. "The weakening of these transmission processes is insidious; for its effects are felt only over the longer run, as the poor education of children today translates into low productivity of adults a generation hence" ([5], p.8). With the illness and death of one or both parents due to AIDS, children experience multiple life complications. In addition to psychosocial distress caused by the illness and death of one or both parents, they are faced with the family's economic problems, inadequate household food supplies, and taking on new responsibilities as food providers [6‐10]. Twelve million children in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to have lost one or both parents due to AIDS [11].

National and international agencies have shown increasing concern about food security in rural African communities faced with the pandemic [12‐14]. Some of the interventions to shore up local food production include support minimizing labor needs, improving harvests, and using local resources to reduce food shortages [1, 13‐15]. The basic assumption of the food policy and development organizations such as the World Bank and FAO is that traditional knowledge is almost exclusively transmitted from parents to children.

A knowledge based intervention for child/adolescent farmers is the Junior Field and Life Schools covering agricultural knowledge and life skills for orphans and other vulnerable children between the ages of 12 and 18 [16‐18]. This knowledge-based approach has its foundation in the well known Farmer Field School approach for adults, and emphasizes learning about agricultural field ecology in a participatory manner [19]. A number of scholars, however, suggest the importance of assessing the impacts of the schools, but there are also indications that needs assessments should be undertaken prior to implementation of such programs [13, 14, 20‐23]. Research in anthropology/ethnobiology has also shown it is difficult to generalize about the loss of knowledge, knowledge gaps, and transmission of environmental and food knowledge and thus indicates that educational interventions could better be supported by empirical studies [20, 24‐26, 21, 27‐31]. This is particularly the case with food and environmental knowledge of children in relation to the adults in their culture [20, 25, 28, 29, 31‐33].

Knowledge is an element of culture and is key to people doing what makes sense to them [34]. Thus, knowledge is a critical component to the mental models people have that influences their interpretation of the world around them [3, 24, 35, 36]. Knowledge, however, is not static. Individuals constantly use the stimulus they receive from their surrounding environment to build their understandings of the world in a process that in the end generates a set of experiences and perceptions grounded in their culture and particular life situation, which ultimately, shapes expertise. The research findings of Reyes et al. [37] illustrate that different activities exert different effects on knowledge competencies in the same culture group. Activities that demonstrate a greater dependency on forest products being positively correlated with greater knowledge of plants and likewise, activities that are farther removed from forests (such as wage labor) showing individuals having less plant knowledge. Not all activities exert the same effect on knowledge.

In this paper the crop pest knowledge of farming adults and children in the context of AIDS is examined. It is anticipated that AIDS will be associated with differences in life situations that would result in intracultural variation in agroecological knowledge. Also examined is how the parental presence operates when the focus is on the agroecology - in this case knowledge of staple food pests (maize and cowpea). The differences associated with being a child orphaned by AIDS or non-orphan will be investigated, and the effect of being a child orphaned by AIDS or a non-orphan living with one's own biological parent, or having no biological parent at all will be examined. The differences among adults, among children and between adults and children in relationship to being affected by AIDS in the Couffo region of Benin are documented. Complementing an earlier study which examined knowledge differences by focusing on pest naming ability [20], the research reported on in this paper focuses on the various kinds of descriptors that farmers use when talking about pests.

The field research was conducted in June, September and October 2006, and in March 2007. An initial phase consisted of a census of households that experienced the death of one or both parents due to AIDS and the subsequent presence of orphans. These orphans were accordingly characterized as paternal, maternal and double orphans (those who lost both parents). For the purpose of this study participants were randomly selected among each of the six categories of farmers, namely: affected and non-affected adult farmers; non-orphan child farmers (living with both their parents), paternal, maternal and double orphan farmers. AIDS affected adults in this study are adults who lost their partner (wife or husband) or adults who foster orphans in their households and are providing care to them. The non-affected adults are those who have not experienced the loss of household members due to AIDS and were not fostering orphans. Eventually, 77 respondents participated to the study, among whom were 26 adults (13 AIDS affected and 13 non-affected) and 51 children between the ages of ten and fourteen (13 paternal orphans, 13 maternal orphans, 13 double orphans, and 12 non-orphans).

The study consisted of comparing different categories of informants (children and adults, affected and non-affected) farmers views on maize and cowpea pests using their semantics, and documenting differences, with the aim of showing whether AIDS status has any influence on the way the farmers talk about the similarities and differences among the pests [39, 46‐48]. In the generation of the data, the cultural domain was first captured [49, 50]. A free listing procedure was conducted using separate list tasks for maize and for cowpea, which were administered on different days [39, 51]. Participants were asked to 'name all living things you think are threats to your maize and cowpea on the farm'. The free listing was followed by a single pile sort, where informants were asked to put together items generated from the free lists that they thought were similar. They were asked to make as many piles as they liked, but there had to be at least more than one pile [49, 50]. These two procedures constituted the entry point of the study. After the pile sort exercise, follow-up conversations were conducted in which farmers were asked to explain as much as they could about the reasoning behind the groupings (the piles) they made. It is especially the outcomes of these follow-up conversations that form the central point of analysis in this article. Thus, these series of dialogues with Adja farmers (children and adults) helped to gather the detailed data that allowed the identification of criteria farmers used in their discussions of pests [38, 52, 53].

Eight types of descriptors were extracted from the conversations with farmers that followed the pile sorting of maize and cowpea pests. Most numerous were descriptors of agronomic damages caused by the pests (generic damages as well as the one specific either to maize or to cowpea). The generic agronomic damages descriptors reflect the fact that there are pests that equally attack maize and cowpea according to farmers, causing similar damages on the two crops. Specific agronomic descriptors express that the pests are found or feed on one of the crops, not the other. For example, farmers use words such as 'remove seed from the soil' or 'cut the seedlings' to reflect generic damages, and 'attack maize cobs' or 'make holes in the cowpea pods' for damages specific to maize or cowpea respectively. In addition, there are also aspects linked to the habitat or ecology of the reported pests (Table 1).

This study examined the differences between AIDS affected and non-affected adults and children in the way they describe pest problems in maize and cowpea. No significant difference between AIDS affected and non-affected adults was discovered nor were there differences overall between adults and children (irrespective of AIDS status). There are, however, some areas of statistically significant differences in the kinds of descriptors AIDS affected farm children and non-affected farm children use, falling into the categories of "form" which was based on morphology and locomotion and "function" that included habitat and ecology, generic and crop specific damages caused by pests, pest management, and utility (use value for e.g. consumption). Ultimately, there is a statistically significant difference in the use of form and function, and the respective expertise attached to their use, between non-orphans and orphans with non-orphans using form less and function more. However, orphans, like adults, have a more balanced expertise in the use of form and function with fatherless orphans having a balance of 50/50 in the descriptors they used, exactly like non-affected adults.

These differences between being more of a novice or more of an expert [38] are potentially related to how much the children interact with an adult and the quality of that interaction. Importantly, we suggest the children's level of interaction with the resources/items under study was vital to the differences uncovered [20, 37]. Our earlier study supports the finding that children who remain with the surviving parent (mother) have more expertise compared to other children [20]. The results show, however, that there are no novices in the strictest sense, that is, totally dependent on visual cues only from observations of form. Both form and function were present in the descriptors of both AIDS affected and non-affected adults and children. The degree to which each kind of descriptor was present in the responses is of particular interest.

In their study, Boster and Johnson [38] found that experts are actually intermediate between the two models of judgment, using form and function aspects fairly equally. In connection to this, an important point to highlight is the observed difference in expertise in evidence between fatherless orphans and other categories of children. It appears that in this study, the child farmers with the most adult-like expertise, that is, the paternal orphans (i.e. those living with a surviving mother), did not abandon early models of understandings of the living things for later ones, but they seem to have accumulated alternative models. This is in accordance with the position defended earlier by Boster and Johnson [38] who argued that novices become experts by starting with readily available models, which are generally superficial (e.g., morphologically based) and gradually acquiring the more abstract ones (e.g., functionally based). There are indications that a similar pattern exists here. Paternal orphans have been shown to be more engaged in farming through the application of their own labor in the fields, and thus have the opportunity to gain more in-field expertise and make more observations, see [58, 59]. These results reflect paternal orphans having new responsibilities, conducting more work in the agricultural fields, and having one surviving parent to obtain needed knowledge from [60, 61] Rather than a knowledge loss for paternal AIDS orphans, it appears there is an acceleration into adult knowledge frames.

Ethnobiological knowledge and practices within any culture vary according to people's social status and context, relations and social networks, income, age and gender, among other attributes [62, 63]. The enculturation of children as young farmers is affected by the combined effect of specific parent-child relationships and the type or level of involvement in farming activities. These dimensions have important implications for gaining expertise in agroecological knowledge. In addition to having one biological parent, selected children probably have more tactical knowledge from engaging in the farm activities [29]. Furthermore, the present study highlights the importance of parent as teacher and role-model to farm household children's acquisition of agroecological knowledge and expertise. Kadiyala and Gillespie [64] found that AIDS has not only deepened vulnerability, but has also impacted the capacity of the extended family to accurately respond to the challenges posed by the pandemic to farm households. This study furthers this observation by showing that foster families appear to not be the best channels for environmental knowledge transfer to double orphans. In this study, double orphans were being raised mainly by grandparents. In addition, some of the double orphans farmed on their own [see 20]. Richter [61] shows that children become more vulnerable when they are cared for by aged relatives due to the conditions of mutual dependency that often exist between adult and child. This mutual dependency could also jeopardize parenting and thus, the acquisition of the agroecological knowledge by double orphans.

The situation of AIDS affected orphan child farmers is one of a mixture of vulnerability and agency, dependency and being depended upon. These findings indicate that rather than a loss of agroecological knowledge, there may be a strengthening of knowledge among selected children who happen to be orphans. Thus, these findings indicate a need to rethink the issue of farming knowledge and its loss in AIDS affected communities.