Agricultural Extension Worldwide

Issues, Practices and Emerging Priorities

William M. Rivera, Susan G. Schram, William M. Rivera, Susan G. Schram

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000562576
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Agribusiness

First published in 1987, Agricultural Extension Worldwide presents an international perspective on agricultural extension and highlights extension as an integral function of agricultural development. Agricultural extension is one of the largest nonformal problem-solving educational systems in the world. It is generally concerned with transferring knowledge and research to farmers but may include services to other target audiences such as farm families and rural youth, as well as serve for developing rural community resources. In sixteen chapters, various major systems of extension are discussed along with factors that make for their success or failure, including the linkages required and the policy and financial supports necessary to make them effective. This book is a must read for scholars and researchers of agricultural economics, agricultural policy and agriculture in general.

II. PRACTICES

Chapter Seven

THE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS OF AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION EDUCATION WITH SPECIAL ATTENTION TO ASIA AND AFRICA*

George H. Axinn

Michigan State University

INTRODUCTION

This paper describes current patterns and new trends in agricultural extension. It emphasizes their effectiveness in diffusion of new agricultural technology and their applicability to small farmers in developing countries, with special focus on Asia and Africa.

To a person who has been struggling with these matters for over 40 years - first as a young farmer on a small farm which was declared economically not viable; later as an agricultural extension worker at many different levels in several states of the USA; still later as a scholar and researcher trying to understand the categories of patterns, the validity and reliability of measures of effectiveness, the diffusion of technology, and the neutrality of scale; and then in more than two decades of practical field struggle to improve the human condition, first in Africa, and more recently in various parts of Asia - the assignment is overwhelming.

In so doing, I am reminded of a line in the book Walden, written by Henry David Thoreau - an American philosopher much influenced by his studies of Hindu scripture and Hindu culture. Thoreau said: ‘There are thousands hacking away at the branches of evil for every one who is cutting at the roots’. What follows is an attempt to identify and expose the roots, however well hidden they may be by the branches.

The systems of agricultural extension are many. Every nation state has one, many have more than one. The numbers of professional personnel involved are legion. A recent survey by Swanson and Rassi (1981) [1] shows over 290 000 men and women, working throughout the world in agricultural extension.

The scope of the effort is enormous. It includes indigenous learning systems, which are everywhere, and carry the main burden of agricultural education for many rural people. It also includes exogenous learning systems, sometimes with massive bureaucracies which have been introduced relatively recently, and are struggling with difficult problems of size, management, personnel, program development, and implementation.

But the potential of the effort is significant. The significance of agricultural extension must always be one of its major tests. What difference does it make? Are rural people better or worse off because of agricultural extension? Or, perhaps as disastrous, does it make any difference at all whether or not the world has agricultural extension education systems?

Let us review briefly some of the examples of successes and failures, analyze the types of systems and current patterns of agricultural extension, and then point up some of the issues which are current.

CRITERIA FOR SUCCESS

One criterion which is perhaps most often used as a measure of success for agricultural extension is that of production. If the farmers produce more, agricultural extension may receive the credit, at least in part.

Effective agricultural extension work in Pakistan certainly contributed, two decades ago, to the rapid spread of Mexi-Pak wheat, and close behind it the new short-stemmed rice varieties from the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. And on both sides of the Punjab, where new technology fit, where the inputs were made available in a timely fashion, and where the prices of the surpluses which farmers now could sell on the market were high enough to make production profitable, production certainly increased.

Even more dramatic stories can be told of the specialized agricultural extension organizations which work with rubber in Malaysia or tobacco in Bangladesh. In both cases, a relatively small, well-staffed agricultural extension group, under the same management as those who supply the inputs and purchase the outputs from farmers, were able to demonstrate significant success in short periods of time. Bangladesh went from a tobacco importer, with almost no local production, to an international exporter in just a few years, with assistance from effective agricultural extension.

In addition, there are many examples of small-scale local efforts in agricultural extension which have been highly successful. The Small Farmers Development Projects in Nepal are typical of others throughout that part of the world where a very limited number of skilful, committed, disciplined agricultural extension staff have worked closely with small groups of local people and have gone beyond merely increasing production. In some cases, and at least for a limited period of time, they have contributed significantly to the enrichment of rural life, and to the improvement of the human condition among the rural people of their areas [2].

Additional demonstrations of small scale projects may be found in Nepal Hill Areas Education Program and in Khit Phen in Thailand, in the thousands of brigades in rural communes in China, in the village groups of the Semal Udong movement in Korea, in small rural bank branches with successful farm credit programs in the Philippines, and the Ghandi Grams of India. They are living examples that small is beautiful, even in agricultural extension [3].

But there is also the other side of the coin - the examples of agricultural extension education efforts which have not been so successful. Sometimes production does not increase. In some cases, yield per hectare even goes down, and agricultural extension seems to receive the blame. One way out is to suggest that productivity is in the hands of larger powers - if the monsoon fails, if the floods come, or if insects plague in uncontrollable numbers, what can the extension staff do? Or if the targets are set by central government, and are not in the interes...