76

 will involve complex political issues. Political leadership is needed at

 the center to help urban, rural, and bureaucratic elites to see their own

 long-term interests in increases in farm production and in the broad dis-

 tribution of benefits.

 Likewise at the local level, leadership is needed. In most cases

 groups will not emerge spontaneously.. The animation rurale programs

 recognized this need for leadership and had extensive government staff at

 several levels, vehicles, training centers, etc., to provide a cadre of

 organizers. Setting up effective groups can be a very difficult challenge

 requiring dedicated, sensitive, patient, humble leaders and organizers. It

 is easy and disastrous to smother peasant initiative and reinforce the notion

 that the group is simply a tool for bureaucratic control. In the Tanzania

 pilot project on grain storage, the team of organizers was sensitive to this problem:

 First of all it was necessary to convince the villagers that
 the outside team did not have a preconceived idea which it
 had "up its sleeve" all the time just waiting for the little
 drama of village democracy to play itself out... It was only
 after having carried a certain line of design (the Nigerian
 crib) forward in discussion for several weeks only to drop
 it when the villagers brought up serious contentions, that
 the same credibility was finally established. It was then
 clear that the tea did not have a vested interest in any
 particular design.

 From where do such organizers come? Are they part of the indigenous
rural society? Alternatively can they really be trained, as animation

rurale presumed? This is often the


 Moulton, Animation Rurale, p. 26.

 2Appropriate Technology for Grain Storage, p. 41.