Capacity building for gender‐sensitive agricultural extension planning in Ethiopia

Abstract

This article concerns capacity building for gender‐sensitive agricultural extension planning in a two‐year FAO pilot project at the Ministry of Agriculture of Ethiopia. The aim of the paper is to review and analyse the capacity‐building process, drawing out the lessons learned, regarding both ‘best practice’ and challenges faced. The author was engaged fully in the project for its two‐years duration and this study is a reflection of that experience. The project involved training extension staff in both participatory rural appraisal and gender analysis to ensure more client‐oriented extension planning. It is concluded that the use of the experiential learning cycle in capacity building, the reliance on participatory management and implementation styles, networking and the mainstreaming of the project within the Extension Department constitute ‘best practice’. Four challenges to the project's success are reviewed. They are, the difficulty of institutionalising the process within the short time‐scale of the project, the necessity of involving policy‐makers at all stages and levels, the need to raise gender awareness amongst rural men and women and the importance of addressing women's lack of decision‐making power.     

The South African Education Agenda: Identifying Markers for Rewriting Agricultural Extension Curricula

Abstract

Changes in education and agriculture in South Africa indicate that agricultural extension practitioners should facilitate continuous learning among farmers. This requires that extension practitioners acquire new skills. To provide these skills requires a critical examination of agricultural extension curricula in the light of South Africa's educational, agricultural and rural development policies with a view to rewriting extension curricula. An initial theoretical examination of extension education in the light of South African education policy yields seven learning outcome indicators encapsulating theory and practice in: 1) theory and practice in problem solving; 2) collect, analyse, organize and critically evaluate information relevant to his extension responsibilities; 3) theory and practice in Participatory Technology Development and innovation; 4) theory and practice in systems (systems thinking), including beyond farm systems; 5) theory and practice in learning facilitation; 6) theory and practice in participatory ‘curriculum’ (extension outcomes, content and process) development; and 7) theory and practice in learning and learning styles. Tertiary institutions and other stakeholders can use these indicators to examine and continuously adjust curricula to ensure extension practitioners are equipped to deliver relevant support to farmers as the agricultural landscape changes.     

Farmers’ Learning Strategies in the Province of Esfahan

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate changes in farming and to look at how farmers adapt to diverse changes in and around their farms in the province of Esfahan, Iran. It is part of a larger project aimed at developing a job competency profile for agricultural extension instructors (AEIs). One hundred and two farmers who had previously followed extension courses in the province of Esfahan were interviewed. The findings demonstrate that a large number of farmers in the target group who are older, married, have low education levels, are smallholders and lack adequate job diversity on their farms. The study revealed that these farmers have experienced sluggish internal and external agricultural change, and they are generally more positive about internal changes than external ones. Respondents designated ‘extension courses’, ‘individual farm visits by official extension agents’ and ‘trial and error’, respectively as their three main learning strategies (LS) to help them adapt to the various changes. The results also indicate that older and more poorly educated farmers have more problems in adopting different LS.     

The Role of Agricultural Consultants in New Zealand in Environmental Extension

Abstract

The aim of this study was to understand the role that agricultural consultants in New Zealand were undertaking in the Research, Development and Extension (RD&E) system—and in particular in relation to environmental extension. New Zealand does not have a public extension service and hence there is a strong reliance on consultants and regional councils for environmental management information and advice. As they are independent of the formal RD&E system there is no guarantee that RD&E outcomes are reaching farmers, nor that effective environmental extension is occurring. The study used a combination of case studies, phone interviews with informed persons and a national web survey to explore the role of the consultant. The study found that agricultural consultants are playing an important role in working with farmers to improve agricultural production. There are, however, indications that gaps have developed over time between agricultural consultants and the agricultural research sector which limit the effectiveness of the RD&E system. Agricultural consultants are playing a minimal role in proactive environmental extension because insufficient market forces are driving this role. The paper suggests that a national database of agricultural consultants could improve the flow of tailored information between research and agricultural consultants and also suggests mechanisms where consultants could be better integrated into the RD&E system and provide feedback to research programs. Market failure in the area of environmental extension could be addressed by publicly funded incentive programs.     

Factors Influencing Access to Integrated Soil Fertility Management Information and Knowledge and its Uptake among Smallholder Farmers in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Purpose: The study evaluated how farmer acquisition, sharing and use patterns of information and knowledge interact with different socioeconomic factors to influence integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) technology uptake.

Design/methodology/approach: The study was conducted as part of an evaluation of field-based farmer learning approaches introduced by SOFECSA in Zimbabwe. Building on emerging farmer interactive platforms, data were collected using farmer participatory research approaches.

Findings: Over 90% of the farmers identified the national extension agents as the farmers' most preferred and reliable sources of information on ISFM, with farmer-to-farmer interactions ranking second. Non-governmental organisations and the print media emerged as the least trusted sources of agricultural technical information. Field-based learning centres, which enabled interactive evaluation of different ISFM options, constituted ~50%, indicating that they were major platforms for information and knowledge sharing. Uptake of ISFM was influenced by farmer resource group and farmers' visits to learning centres. Farmer experience and access to extension services were, in turn, the major factors influencing farmers' use of ISFM information. Approaches that support farmer-to-farmer interactions are required and learning centres are a suitable platform for such interactions to occur.

Practical implications: The article brings to attention the role of learning centres in fostering adoption of ISFM technologies. Insights on the need to support and strengthen agricultural extension in rural smallholder communities are provided.

Originality/value: This is a unique study exploring the role of farmer-oriented information and knowledge management in promoting complex technologies such as ISFM. A new dimension on the demands of new approaches for information dissemination to enhance knowledge sharing is presented.     

抗战前安徽农业技术推广浅析

全面抗战爆发前,安徽省政府组织成立了农业推广机构,设立了一些农业改良场,重视农业技术推广,推进了农村经济的发展。本文对这一时期安徽采取的农业技术推广措施、取得的成绩、存在的不足进行了梳理与分析。     

Agricultural Extension Services and Market Regulation: Learning from a Comparison of Six EU Countries

Abstract

If farmers are to meet the new challenges facing agriculture (environment, rural development, etc.), appropriate knowledge has to be produced. But observations in six EU countries (France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK) show that unexpected problems arise when technical support for agriculture is linked to market regulation, as recommended since the late 1980s. The source of these problems can be understood better by applying concepts from the service economy: i) The production of new knowledge requires strong interaction between service providers (technical support bodies) and beneficiaries (farmers). The weakening of non-market regulation procedures, which partly guaranteed these possibilities of interaction, makes the conception of an advisory service difficult. ii) As soon as consultancy becomes a paying service, some beneficiaries reduce technical interaction with their colleagues in order to benefit from a productive advantage, and the ‘multipliable’ nature of new knowledge is reduced. iii) An increasing number of farmers are excluded from the benefits of technical support even though they help to provide services that society expects from agriculture (management of the land, maintenance of activities in low-density areas). iv) The responsibility for combining contradictory requirements (competitiveness, environment, rural development) is most often put on the shoulders of individual farmers who are unequipped to deal with such complex issues. Observed trends attest to the fact that effects often run counter to the stated agricultural and rural development objectives of policies.     

The Many Turnings of Agricultural Extension in Australia

Abstract

Purpose: This article outlines the development of extension as a discipline in Australia, its organization, and the ideological changes that have occurred from the second half of the nineteenth century through to the present.

Design/Methodology/Approach: It considers the evolution of extension across the different states of Australia from a national perspective and describes how the research development and extension (RD&E) complex has rotated through cycles of crises, highs, awakenings in thought and practice, and periods where achievements and institutions unravel.

Findings: Discussed is the tension between public and private sector extension, as well as the successes and failures of various paradigms. It considers the impacts of different agricultural policy on Australian agricultural RD&E across the decades. In particular it deals with the current ‘unravelling’ of the agricultural RD&E system in Australia, and tries to anticipate future demands on agricultural extension and how these services might be delivered into the future.

Practical Implications: The article challenges the reader to consider the discipline of extension as a subset of the greater society in which it exists. It provides an insight into how the agricultural research, development and extension capacity of a nation can be observed to ebb and flow over generations in accord with the rhythm of society.

Originality/Value: The article presents a perspective that has not been fully captured or understood until now.     

Book review

This paper aims to examine the experiences of pupils and professionals who are affected by actual or threatened permanent exclusion (what used to be called being expelled) from school. An ethnographic study based on the writer’s employment within secondary schools and the Children’s Services department of an urban local authority in England explores the idea that professionals may be forced to make decisions about pupils in the face of powerful competition between the politically unchallengeable concepts of tolerance, inclusivity, attainment, and choice. The paper argues that the tensions of multi‐agency working are focussed within what will be called the contested space of the pupil’s ‘extended body’. Permanent exclusion, along with its tendency to prompt a pathological reading of a pupil’s issues, is therefore seen as an authoritarian strategy designed to ameliorate the inherent paradoxical tension experienced by the various professionals working within an education system dedicated to the concept of ‘full inclusion’ but measured and funded on the grounds of academic league tables.     

Book review

Analyzing social & political change: A casebook of methods. Angela Dale and Richard B. Davies (Eds.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994, x+229 pages.     

Book review

This paper reports an evaluation of an innovative university–school partnership in which teacher practitioners work as university lecturers in a regional Australian pre‐service teacher education programme. The philosophy of this programme encompasses authentic partnerships between universities, schools and other industry employers. The study was motivated by an interest inunderstanding the experiences and outcomes for the teacher practitioners and in documenting their experiences. Staff members who are currently on contract as university lecturers as well as teachers who have completed secondments and returned to school settings are surveyed. This paper focuses on suggestions to improve the partnership and discusses future directions for the partnership.