Agricultural and environmental research programs often equate participation
with mobilization and extract contributions of work, knowledge and
other resources from participants. Many scientists rely on rural people
mainly to provide land and "authentic" labor for experiments and to indicate
"consumer preferences". Yet rural people are often well-placed to identify
problems, formulate solutions and devise tests of complex innovations in situ.
They may participate in agroforestry research in roles ranging from free
labor on-farm to board members of research stations. In fact, we can identify
several distinct roles of land users in the research process: