Agricultural Extension And Rural Advisory Services What Have We Learned What S Next

Agricultural extension provides the critical connection from agricultural innovation and discovery to durable improvements at scale, as farmers and other actors in the rural economy learn, adapt, and innovate with new technologies and practices. However, lack of capacity and performance of agricultural extension in lower- and middle-income countries is an ongoing concern. Research on agricultural extension and advisory services (in short, extension) has been an integral part of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) since its inception. This brief synthesizes key findings from research funded by and linked to PIM from 2012 to 2021, presenting lessons learned and a vision for the future of extension. A list of all PIM-related extension and advisory services research is provided at the end. Designing and implementing effective provision of extension is complex, and efforts to strengthen extension services often fall into a trap of adopting “best practice” blueprint approaches that are not well-tailored to local conditions. An expansive literature examines the promises and pitfalls of common approaches, including training-and-visit extension systems, farmer field schools, and many others (Anderson and Feder 2004; Anderson et al. 2006; Waddington and White 2014; Scoones and Thompson 2009). To understand extension systems and build evidence for what works and where, the “best-fit” framework, a widely recognized approach developed by Birner and colleagues (2009) and adapted by Davis and Spielman (2017), offers a simple impact chain approach (Figure 1). The framework focuses on a defined set of extension service characteristics that affect performance: governance structures and funding; organizational and management capacities and cultures; methods; and community engagement — all of which are subject to external factors such as the policy environment, agroecological conditions, and farming-system heterogeneity. To enhance extension performance and, ultimately, a wide range of outcomes and impacts, new and innovative interventions can be applied and adapted within this set of extension characteristics.

This report builds upon FAO’s work promoting gender mainstreaming in extension and advisory services, cataloguing challenges and suggesting strategies for increasing the gender responsiveness of rural advisory services globally. [Author] The purpose of this review is to apply FAO’s accumulated knowledge about gender equality in the context of rural advisory services to assess the situation in the Europe and Central Asia region. [Author] The report provides a snapshot of the extent to which gender considerations are currently integrated into rural advisory services in the region and highlights good practices that are in line with FAO’s gender equality strategies. [Author] The report concludes with recommendations for FAO, partner organizations and stakeholders in the fields of agricultural extension and rural advisory services, on how to further improve such services to extend their reach to rural women and men who have previously had limited or no access. [Author] This process requires moving away from gender‑neutral service provision, which often results in the exclusion of women, towards transformative extension and rural advisory services that challenge unequal gender relations and address underlying discriminatory norms and practices. [Author]

Access to agricultural extension and crop advisory services can play a crucial role in ensuring widespread and appropriate use of new and improved agricultural technologies, but the delivery and use of such services is not well understood in Myanmar. We assess their use based on repeated large-scale and nationally representative farm surveys from 2020 onwards, as well as on insights from key informant interviews and secondary data. The major findings are the following: Agricultural extension use is low and declining. Before the crisis years – due to COVID-19 and a military coup – agricultural extension provision and use in Myanmar was at much lower levels than in neighboring countries. There has been a further decline in use since. Forty-one percent of farmers reported to have received crop advice during the monsoon of 2020, but this share declined by 9 percentage points to 32 percent of farmers in the monsoon of 2022. In-person agricultural extension is more widely used than digital extension. In the last dry season, 26 and 20 percent of the farmers relied on in-person and digital extension respectively. The private sector is the main provider of in-person agricultural extension. During the last dry season, the main provider of in-person agricultural extension was the private sector (used by 18 percent of the farmers), followed by the public sector (13 percent of the farmers), and NGOs (6 percent). Previous seasons show similar shares. In-person agricultural extension has been declining since 2020. In the last three years, there has been a significant decline in the provision of in-person extension services by all providers. In the case of the public sector in particular, the number of agricultural extension events in 2021/22 dropped by more than 50 percent compared to before the crisis years. Digital agricultural extension service provision increased rapidly before 2020. Before the COVID-19 pandemic and the political crisis, the provision of digital extension services grew rapidly, linked to the rapid expansion of mobile cellphone networks and the spread of cheap smart phones. The total number of posts on Facebook by agricultural companies and organizations from July 2015 until November 2019 more than tripled. The biggest growth in posts was seen in 2018 and 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital agricultural extension provision decreased immediately after the coup, but then expanded again in the years after. It was used by 20 percent of the farmers during the last dry season. Most users started using digital agricultural extension since the COVID-19 pandemic and the political crisis. After the initial drop in 2021 - as the use of Facebook was banned and as there were severe communication blockages - there has been an increase in activity since, and this has occurred despite the persistent communication and internet problems and reduced mobile network access in the country. Digital agricultural extension is mostly provided through Facebook by agricultural input companies and social enterprises. The most widely used services are provided through Facebook pages, that for a number of organizations and companies have millions of followers. An analysis of the posts on these Facebook pages shows they contain more technical information than product advertisements, even so for (almost) all commercial input retail companies. We also recently note the establishment of farmer extension groups – a more interactive model – and specific commodity focused groups on Facebook. There are also groups on other online platforms, including specialized agricultural apps and call centers. However, these platforms are less used. Digital extension services are almost exclusively provided by the private sector, including social businesses. Use of agricultural extension is non-inclusive, with less educated, more remote, female, and smaller farmers accessing them less, for digital as well as for in-person extension. We also note an important difference by age, with older farmers relying more on in-person services and younger ones more on digital extension. Conflict-affected areas access agricultural extension services significantly less frequently. Farmers residing in townships under martial law – 13 percent of the townships – use any extension (in-person or digital) service less (8 percent compared to townships not under martial law, often because they lack access to the internet in these townships). While farmers residing in the most insecure areas use in-person extension less (11 percent less), they are however able to rely on digital services to a similar extent as farmers in the more secure townships. The findings of the study have a number of important implications. Scaling of digital extension. Given the widespread insecurity and mobility constraints in the country, limiting in-person travel, alternative digital opportunities have recently emerged that can provide crop advisory services at scale, and especially in some – but not all – of the conflict-affected areas. The scaling-up of such services would be very much welcomed, given that currently only one out of five farmers in Myanmar are relying on such services. Leverage the experience of the private sector. The private sector is most active in agricultural extension, in-person and digital. It has been leading the pivot from in-person to the provision of digital services – not only focusing on sales of their products, but very much being involved in crop advice overall – providing important opportunities to work with these initiatives to finetune and extend the reach of agronomic and other advice for farmers, especially as a large share of farmers is not yet reached by current agricultural extension models. Embrace innovations. Innovations in digital agriculture are quickly emerging - such as chatbots and A.I. - but are not yet being used to their fullest extent in Myanmar. Further piloting, testing, and evaluating the impact of such innovations should be encouraged. Ensure internet access. Access to the internet is problematic in Myanmar – more than 40 percent of all households in Myanmar reported in a recent national survey that they never or only occasionally use the internet - and further efforts to ensure access, especially in conflict affected areas, as well as improve digital literacy should be encouraged. Assess impact of agricultural extension. Despite the interest in the country, few rigorous assessments have been done on the impact of different modalities of extension on adoption of improved technologies and agricultural performance. This would be useful evidence to stimulate the scale-up of the most promising models.

This manual provides guidance for organizing and facilitating training of trainers in gender-sensitive rural advisory services design and delivery. It has been developed as part of the FAO project “Capacity Development Support to Rural Women on the Socio-economic and Gender Aspects of Sustainable Rural Development”, which was implemented in Turkey and Azerbaijan, in 2014-16. The project was realized under the FAO-Turkey Partnership Programme and financed by the Government of Turkey. The manual is based on the pilot trainings carried out in Turkey and Azerbaijan and is intended to help meet the needs for training guidelines specifically designed for strengthening the gender sensitivity of rural advisory services. The guidelines are developed to be applied not just to one country situation, but for easy adaptation and use in strengthening advisory services globally. The manual content is organized into three main sections. Section 1 introduces the manual, section 2 provides detailed g uidelines for all stages of a workshop design and preparation and section 3 is a step by step programme for delivery of a four day workshop. A final section of annexes includes sample training materials, sample slide presentations and notes for use in workshop delivery, a glossary of gender related terminology, and useful references and resource material on gender and agriculture.

Agricultural transformation and development are critical to the livelihoods of more than a billion small-scale farmers and other rural people in developing countries. Extension and advisory services play an important role in such transformation and can assist farmers with advice and information, brokering and facilitating innovations and relationships, and dealing with risks and disasters. 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 a selected set of country cases, and shares lessons and policy insights. Drawing on both primary and secondary data, the book contributes to the literature on extension by applying a common and comprehensive framework — the “best-fit” approach — to assessments of extension systems, which allows for comparison across cases and geographies. Insights from the research support reforms — in governance, capacity, management, and advisory methods — to improve outcomes, enhance financial sustainability, and achieve greater scale. Agricultural Extension should be a valuable resource for policymakers, extension practitioners, and others concerned with agricultural development.

Public and nonpublic extension and advisory services are both key to sustainable agriculture, resilient livelihoods, and inclusive growth1. The Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) has called for “the new extensionist”(Davis and Sulaiman 2014), emphasizing the functional competencies needed to help clientele cope with complex challenges such as climate change and nutrition. Since 2015 the GFRAS “New Extensionist Learning Kit” (NELK)has been equipping extension agents globally with functional competencies through face-to-face, online, and blended learning(AFAAS 2018). Competencies are defined in many different ways (Westera 2021). For this paper, we define competency simply as “the capability to perform actions which add value” (Mulder, 2012: 319). Functional competencies(the so-called soft skills, as distinct from more technical areas in agriculture, animal sciences, natural resources, etc.)have not been well documented in the academic literature, especially with respect to digitally enabled extension (Strong et al. 2014). According to Khalil and colleagues (2009), competencies such as leadership, communication, program planning, and evaluation are important factors for performance of extension staff. Digital skills are also becoming more important for extension officers. The utilization of digital technology (online modules, webinars) to deliver the NELK modules provides the opportunity to use expertise available globally to train many extension professionals at the same time. How ready, however, are extension officers globally to use such digital approaches –for continuous professional development and learning and also for outreach? Spielman and colleagues (forthcoming) developed an index of “digital readiness” of extension agents in Rwanda. Digital readiness is also referred to as Networked Readiness Index or Technology Index, and indicates the status and growth of information and communications technologies (ICT) and how ICTs are effectively used to achieve maximum benefits to the country and its citizens (Bharatula and Murthy 2020).

Although there is an increasing base of literature on extension and advisory services, their role in building resilience in particular has not yet been explored empirically. The literature on resilience in general is itself only in the nascent stage. However, past intervention efforts that attempt to move from emergency responses to long-term development indicate that without well-capacitated systems for implementing interventions, such a transition could be difficult. This brief explores the sustainable-livelihoods framework to conceptualize the capacity needs of resilience-focused extension and advisory services. It indicates where to move the policy and research agenda forward with regard to the role of extension and advisory services in building resilience.