AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION: Towards Innovative Strategies? Jock R. Anderson, UNE, WB, IFPRI drawing on...
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Transcript of AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION: Towards Innovative Strategies? Jock R. Anderson, UNE, WB, IFPRI drawing on...
AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION: Towards Innovative
Strategies?
Jock R. Anderson, UNE, WB, IFPRIdrawing on work with Gershon Feder
DEC/ARD, World Bank, Washington, DC
Extension: Good Thing for ARD? Farmer’s quests & their needs for
productivity growth Human-capital-enhancing inputs central Enhanced flows of cogent information Sounds good, as well as easy, & has been cost-effective sometimes! But, many conundrums…especially in an
era of PRSCs etc.
Bob Evenson’s latest data musings on Green Rev’n
Clusters byGRMV
Adoption
Crop Value
per ha
Fertilizer
per ha
ExtensionWorkers per
billion ha
(dollars) (kg/ha) 1960 2000
LT 2% 78 2 230 461
2-10% 128 22 392 402
10-20% 94 6 149 220
20-30% 112 12 245 416
30-40% 180 40 70 371
40-50% 227 52 287 827
50-60% 300 68 70 140
GT65% 488 166 150 442
Many significant public-good attributes
80% of extension services are publicly-funded and delivered by civil servants
12% provided by NGOs etc. 8% by private providers Developing countries have 90%
of the >0.5m extension workers
Conceptual Frameworks but not for today! Information as an Input to
Productivity Growth—Demand for Information
Welfare Economics Contextualization Perfect Markets: rivalry, excludability,
appropriability, symmetric information, complete markets with no distortions or externalities (eg, Hanson & Just 2001)
Table 1: Extension products by the nature of economic characteristics of information (based on Umali and Schwartz, 1994, Figure 3.2, p. 24).
Excludability
Low High
RIVALRY
Low Public Goods Mass media information Time insensitive production, marketing, and management information of wide applicability
Toll Goods Time-sensitive production, marketing, or management information
High Common Pool Goods Information embodied in locally available resources or inputs Information on organizational development
Private Goods Information embodied in commercially available inputs Client-specific information or advice
Knowledge delivered by extension Embodied
in market goods such as purchased inputs, best left to private sector
Disembodied general, non-excludable information PG specialized, excludable information TlG
Private Extension Services and Cost Recovery Commercial farmers not a problem Small-scale farmers – may need public
investment to develop capacities of service providers and establish markets for services
Much movement to privatization but … Beware crowding out of public provision to the
more remote clients when public providers incur diseconomies of size (such as for training) and scope for the provisioning task they are left with
Public Financing of Extension? when the general public benefits more than
the extension client when government can provide services more
cheaply or better when extension services directly facilitate
other programs when the private sector does not provide
needed services I.e., “Yes” with positive externalities to
innovation or market failure in service provision
Public-Private Partnerships A major emerging trend But experience still rather limited in
most developing countries! An active learning opportunity?
A Framework for Analyzing Extension Organizations Scale and complexity of extension
operations The dependence of success in extension
on the broader policy environment The problems that stem from the less
than ideal interaction of extension with the knowledge generation system
The difficulties inherent in tracing extension impact
and …
…more on Framework
The profound problems of accountability The oftentimes weak political
commitment and support for public extension
The frequent encumbrance with public duties in addition to those related to knowledge transfer
The severe difficulties of fiscal unsustainability faced in many countries
Some Extension Modalities
Training and Visit (T&V) Extension Decentralization /Devolution Fee-for-Service and Privatized
Extension Farmer Field Schools
The Impact of Extension In principle, as for any investment appraisal Two broad approaches to estimating RORs
the econometric approach relates productivity changes to investment in research and extension
the economic surplus method builds benefits from the bottom up, based on estimated productivity changes at the field level and adoption rates for specific technologies
Whatever, never easy!
Technology Generation Knowledge Delivery Farm Decision-Making Impact
EducationInfrastructure
Labor
BasicResearch
AdaptiveResearch
Weather and Pests
Household objectives
Output
RiskCredit
Food Security
Activities Output
Impact Model
Demonstrations/ Field trials
Field Days
Media: Audio, Video, Print
Public Extension Service
Farmer Organizations, NGOs
Private Sector: Input suppliers, processors, consultants
ProductivityEfficiency
AwarenessAdoption
AccessContactDistribution
Institutional DevelopmentSustainabilityEfficacyPlurality
Research-Extension LinksRecommendationsTrainingFeedback
HHwelfare
Land Quality
Spillovers
Indigenous Systems
Friends, neighbors, Innovative farmers
Inputs Outcomes Results
Prices
Source: Gautam, Madhur (2000): Agricultural Extension – The Kenya Experience: An Impact Evaluation. Operations Evaluation Department, The World Bank.
A salutary note Difficult methodological issues
regarding causality and quantification of all benefits must, however, be an important qualifier to the prevailing evidence of good economic returns from extension
Evidently, yet more evaluative work is called for to further assist policy insights and investment decisions
Much yet to be done for needed extension services to the poor Informed by the lessons of the past,
governments should be able to increase the chance of reaping high returns
to their investment and successfully assist farmers to boost their
productivity and role in economic growth In short, need innovative strategies
which is why we are gathered! Horses for courses Bottom line; let innovation be informed by the
lessons of experience