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