domain, of small farmers in the Amazon Basin of Brazil (Singh, 1990). A number of
biophysical environments (land type) exist in the area represented by whether the land was
cleared from primary or secondary forest (PF or SF) and whether it was in first or second year
of use (the subscripts). WL symbolizes land cleared by bulldozer when the communities were
established and is essentially waste land. Four treatments were included:

 the farmers' local practice (FP), which had essentially no, or very low levels of
 fertilization;

 a "full dose" of triple super phosphate (TSP);

 chicken manure (CM) plus a half dose of TSP; and

 processed city waste (PCW) from Manaus, plus a half dose of TSP.

Two criteria represent several which might be relevant in the area. The criterion Mg ha-1 is
more often used by researchers and extension personnel than by farmers. When cash is a scarce
resource, as is the case in these communities, kg $-' of cash cost is a common criterion used by
resource-poor, small farmers. Other criteria also could be included.

The result of using MSA and on-farm research is to enable the creation of multiple extension
(recommendation) messages tailored to specific field environments and the different criteria
which farmers may use to evaluate new technology, Figure 6. Farmers with fields from all the
environments included in on-farm research in a research domain can benefit from this kind of
a research-extension program. Following the first year's research program, extension
demonstration trials (which also can serve the purpose of verification trials for research and
farmer purposes) can be set up so that individual farmers can evaluate the specific
recommendations against their current practices. Farmers, extension personnel and researchers
all benefit from this additional effort.


Table 1. Summary of the recommendation domains and the technology recommended for maize,
Rio Preto da Eva, Amazonas, Brazil, based on environmental factors and evaluation criteria.

 Land Type Evaluation criterion
 Mg ha-1 kg $-

 PFI TSP FP
 SFi CM FP
 PF2 CM CM
 SF2 CM CM
 WL CM

 Source: Singh, 1990