Concepts and practices in agricultural extension in developing ...

• An appropriate administrative or organizational structure exists within which the disseminationactivities may be established and conducted.• There is a legislative or some other official mandate or influential proponents, which prescribes orenables that agricultural extension work is desirable and must occur.• There are invariably a variety of antecedents, which have attempted protoforms (basicframes, used until a more suitable form can be found) of agricultural information and advicedissemination.• The incidence of critical situations, such as famine, crop failure, soil exhaustion, or alteredeconomic conditions or relationship may create an immediate cause for initiating the organizationof extension work in the form of mass campaigns.2.2.1 Pre-independenceIn this era, emphasis was placed on commodity programs—expatriate ‘rural agents’ to organizecommunities and serve as contact points for government authorities, input and credit suppliers andbuying agents. Their broadly defined roles often extended into human health, census taking and taxcollection.2.2.2 Immediate post-independenceCharacteristics of the period between the late 1950s and 1960s:• institutionalization of many national extension services• agricultural extension became attached to the Ministry of Agriculture• confidence in western technology led to the adoption of ‘diffusion model’ or ‘Technology Transfermodel’ of extension delivery—a hierarchical process of technology transfer backed by advances inmass media• focus was also on interpersonal communication and community development• the agricultural service was multifunctional, with weak connections to agricultural research• extension agents were entrusted with a variety of functions ranging from credit delivery, inputsdistribution, and sundry coordination duties such as: clerical, statistical, or even political chores.2.2.3 Extension in the 1970sDuring the 1970s, the extension systems in developing countries changed as the realization cameabout that there was a need to reach more farmers and to better train extension agents. The maindevelopments included integrated rural development approaches, and the emergence of Training andVisit (T&V) extension systems. The ‘diffusion model’ of extension gave way to the ‘get the technologyright’ model, where farm-level constraints explained non-adoption of technology, with a prescriptionto ease the constraints through integrated packages of services (Axinn 1988).This ushered in the World Bank-sponsored Training and Visit System (T&V). This system used contactfarmers in order to multiply extension’s effect. Being highly structured, this system was top–down andcharacterized by rigidity and high costs. Funding often came through loans from the World Bank.Working mainly with contact farmers stifled diversity, because many were large scale male farmerswho had little in common with small-scale resource-poor farmers.The T&V system was designed to address some of the weaknesses in the previous extension approaches,such as weak linkages with research and limited training of field extension workers. As its name suggests,34