Agricultural advisory services play an important role in supporting the use of the agricultural sector as an engine of pro-poor growth and enabling small farmers to meet new challenges, such as accessing export markets, adopting environmentally sustainable production techniques, and coping with HIV/AIDS and other health challenges that affect agriculture. After years of neglect, there is now renewed interest in agricultural advisory services in many countries. The issue of how best to provide and finance advisory services remains controversial, however. The questions under debate include:
- What should be the roles of the public sector, private sector, and civil society?
- How can we ensure that agricultural advisory services are demand-driven and meet the diverse information needs of farmers?
- How can advisory services be made efficient and financially sustainable?
- How can we ensure that female farmers, the poor, and other marginalized groups have access to agricultural advisory services?
In the past, agricultural extension has featured the use of standardized models, especially the training and visit system. Current trends in agricultural extension, however, focus on decentralization, outsourcing, and privatization.
Past experiences clearly show that importing standardized models of extension to a new context is not a promising strategy, even when the imported models are viewed as "best practice." What is important is to build capacity among policy planners and extension managers to identify modes of providing and financing extension that best fit the specific conditions and development priorities of their country. This policy brief provides an overview of pluralistic agricultural advisory services and presents an analytical framework that can help policy planners and extension managers to identify best fit options for financing and providing these services. The framework can also guide research projects aimed at creating empirical evidence on what works where and why. The framework focuses on (a) the design elements of a system of advisory services—that is, governance structures, capacity and management, and advisory methods—and their comparative advantages and disadvantages under different frame conditions; (b) performance measurement and quality management in the provision of agricultural advisory services; and (c) impact assessment with regard to multiple goals as well as assessment of the costs and benefits associated with different ways of providing and financing agricultural advisory services. The framework provides a tool for the design, analysis, and evaluation of agricultural advisory services that acknowledges that these services form part of a wider agricultural knowledge and innovation system.
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- 2006. Birner, Regina; Davis, Kristin; Pender, John; Nkonya, Ephraim; Anandajayasekeram, Ponniah; Ekboir, Javier; Mbabu, Adiel; Spielman, David; Horna, Daniela; Benin, Samuel; Cohen, Marc J. DSGD Discussion Paper No. 37.