Project assistance completion report (PACR) : agricultural technology transfer project, project no. 664-0304

The project resulted in the awarding of 98 U.S. degrees (40 Ph.D.s and 58 M.S.s) to 85 trainees; of note is that those who received their degrees from U.S. Land Grant universities received degree equivalency. The project also financed short-term U.S. training for 43 Tunisians, attendance by 200 Tunisians and Americans at a Tuniso-American colloquium on sustainable agriculture, and 13 agricultural research programs at Tunisian institutions. The project had a positive impact in three major areas: strengthening the Tunisian institutions responsible for developing and delivering agricultural technology, promoting use of the latest agricultural techniques by Tunisian administrators, faculty, researchers, and technical personnel, and making Tunisian agricultural institutions more responsive and action-oriented through the use of the most relevant technologies and management techniques. These changes have led to increases in both production and farm income as small farmers have been provided, through a more effective delivery system, technologies related to fertilizer use, varietal selection, and other agronomic areas. On the negative side, the linkages component encountered serious problems and did not produce significant results. Most Tunisians looked on it as exclusively a program of research grants and placed little or no importance on establishing or maintaining professional ties. The program of individual linkages between Tunisian and U.S. researchers suffered from administrative delays and lack of a logical procedure for choosing proposals; the program succeeded only in cases where the two individuals already had worked together for an extended period of time. The institutional linkages programs was based on a "Sister Universities" concept quite different from the kind of linkages Tunisia was used to with European schools; the disparity in size between U.S. and Tunisian schools also posed a problem. However, since the PACD there are still institutional linkages between two Tunisian institutions and Oregon State and Montana State universities. Finally, the sabbatical program failed to generate much interest, as most Tunisian laboratories were not organized to host Americans, who generally want to spend their sabbatical time writing for publication. Several lessons were learned. (1) The high return rate (95%) of participants is due to the fact that: all long-term participants were mature individuals with practical work experience and a formal commitment to return to their jobs; no undergraduate degrees were offered; and extensions and second consecutive degrees were offered on an exceptional basis only. (2) The number of students who went into research after degree completion was lower than expected; many opted instead for teaching, where the pay is better. This had a direct effect on the amount and type of agricultural research conducted to date. (3) U.S. trainees, especially at the Ph.D. level, ranked high in their exposure to the advanced technologies, knowledge of subject matter, and ability to relate their training to the Tunisian situation, but less well in solving administrative problems at their home institutions. As a result, they frequently experienced extreme frustration upon their return. French and Tunisian training programs, by contrast, generally require students to spend a longer time in "the system" learning how to resolve or circumvent administrative road blocks.