Introduction

The difficulty the institutions and agencies had in realising a viable model of the medic/cereal rotation and managing it successfully left the end-users, extension agents and the farmers, in an invidious situation. Farmers floundered not only because they had no scarifiers or combine seeders but also because of the confused messages about management that they were getting from the institutions. In spite of this many farmers persisted with medic and their governments and some agencies made efforts to help them.

The importance of management

On the farm the management of the pasture is the critical factor in success. Figure 11.1 shows the effect that management carried out by the farmer at the appropriate time has on the productivity of the system. Note that this chart shows in a simplified way the management of the medic system. The effects of each operation are shown in italics and then accumulated through the arrows and lines to the final yield of cereals and the regeneration of the medic pasture.

Provision of resources

In order to carry out effective management, farmers need adequate resources and governments within the region were well aware of these by the mid-1980s.

Within the region some changes in attitude towards medic had occurred. Tunisia's Agriculture Minister (Ben Osman), and many others, proudly claimed medics as indigenous species (FAO, 1987), although the suspicion of ‘Australian cultivars’ as cause of ‘failure’ was still commented upon.