Agricultural extension plays a crucial role in boosting agricultural productivity, increasing food security, and improving rural livelihoods around the world. A new IFPRI book, Agricultural Extension: Global Status and Performance in Selected Countries, provides a global overview of agricultural extension and advisory services, assesses and compares extension systems at the national and regional levels, examines the performance of extension approaches in five selected country cases, and shares lessons and policy insights.
An October 28 virtual event, co-organized by IFPRI Ethiopia and IFPRI Malawi, explored the East Africa learning from this book by providing perspectives and insights from Ethiopia, Malawi, and Uganda.
In her overview, IFPRI Senior Research Fellow Kristin Davis explained that the book fills three main gaps in extension knowledge: (1) the lack of a common extension framework across countries; (2) little up-to-date global extension data; and, (3) no comparative performance data that links primary and secondary sources across countries.
IFPRI Research Fellow Guush Berhane then presented the book chapter on extension services in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has one of the highest farmer-extension agent ratios in the world and has invested significantly in its extension system. Although substantial progress has been made in recent years, the country’s extension system still faces several challenges including overburdened development agents; under resourced farmer training centers; overly standardized services; and limited innovations. Productivity increases in Ethiopia are not knowledge driven but driven by the adoption of technologies and expansion of cultivated area. “Going forward, given resource constraints, important choices have to be made when it comes to the choices between the quality and quantity of services provided,” said Berhane.
Extension services are identified as a major constraint to the development of smallholder farmers in Malawi. To learn more about the impact of agricultural extension on the development outcomes, IFPRI and partners launched the pluralistic agricultural extension study in 2016 to analyze demand for and supply of agricultural extension services in Malawi and help design activities to strengthen service providers’ capacity to address farmer’s demands for information. In her presentation, former senior lecturer at the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) Catherine Mthinda reflected on the Malawi chapter of the book. She emphasized that while extension services led to greater technology awareness, they did not translate into significant adoption of technologies or improved management practices. Farm productivity and commercialization in Malawi also remain low. Often, it is not the delivery tool or approach that is the problem, but the capacity to implement and scale them up effectively. Mthinda recommended going beyond input metrics and investing in implementation and coordination capacity. She also recommended focusing on priority value chains and including ICT methods into extension packages.
Uganda has also invested significantly in improving provision of agricultural extension in addition to other agricultural development programs. IFPRI non-resident fellow Ephraim Nkonya highlighted the strong relationship between the effectiveness and institutional affiliation of agricultural extension agents (AEA) – underscoring the importance of pluralistic extension services. While there are only few female AEA in Uganda, the book chapter shows they are more effective in reaching women and poor farmers than male AEA, especially when serving under the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) or NGOs. Also, Nkonya noted that extension workers under NAADS focus on production messages, whereas those employed by NGOs include more information on prices, marketing, and processing. Training of agricultural extension agents serving under the Single Spine Agricultural Extension System is required to increase their knowledge on sustainable land management and marketing as well as postharvest knowledge, said Nkonya.
After the country presentations, IFPRI Senior Research Fellow and Program Leader Ethiopia, Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse moderated a panel discussion to draw out comparisons and lessons learnt between the three countries case studies. Philip Idro, Director of Upland Rice Millers Co. Ltd and Former Uganda Ambassador to China, noted that “it is not possible to have a one size fits all extension services, as communities have different levels of technological, organizational, and climate reach.”
Digitalization featured prominently in the panel discussion. Idro sees digitization as a cost-effective way to deliver extension services to remote farmers. Yenenesh Egu Bezabih, Director of the Agricultural Extension Directorate in Ethiopia, said that despite poor infrastructure, ICT plays an important role in extension in Ethiopia, where government uses among others interactive radio, call-in lines, portable solar projectors and many other tools to reach farmers.
The countries have some similar approaches as well as unique ones. Uganda has adopted a similar approach to Ethiopia’s Farmer Training Centers in its Farmer Development Centers. Malawi has used Farmer Field Schools and Farmer Research Networks. These initiatives aim to increase productivity and strengthen linkages between extension, research and education. The countries are at different levels of professionalizing extension services. Malawi panelist, Associate Professor LUANAR Daimon Kambewa noted a lack of professionalization and use of unapproved extension messages by some extension service providers. He stated that the government of Malawi is working to professionalize extension services by updating related curricula at the tertiary level.
Bezabih noted that Ethiopia had increased salaries and changed the incentive for its extension workers, so they invest more time into providing quality service to farmers. She also stated that extension is expensive and that there is a need to alleviate its financial burden to government. Idro wondered whether it would be more effective to invest in government run projects or to channel more funds to banks, who could then provide financing at farmer level.
IFPRI Malawi’s program leader, Bob Baulch, concluded the virtual event by highlighting three challenges for the future of extension: (1) How can the pluralism of extension service provision be combined with both the quality and consistency of extension advice? (2) What can be done to make extension services more demand driven? and, (3) Can digitalization of extension services help extension service providers to avoid the quantity and quality trade-off?
Event recording | SlideShare | PDF Presentation Slides 3,5 MB | Q/A
Links:
Book - Agricultural Extension: Global Status and Performance in Selected Countries
Agricultural extension: Global status and performance in selected countries: Synopsis
Book chapters
