AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION: Towards Innovative Strategies?

1. AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION: Towards Innovative Strategies? Jock R. Anderson, UNE, WB, IFPRI drawing on work with Gershon Feder DEC/ARD, World Bank, Washington, DC

2. 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.

3. Clusters by GRMV Adoption Crop Value per ha Fertilizer per ha Extension Workers 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 Bob Evenson’s latest data musings on Green Rev’n

4. 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

5. Conceptual Frameworksbut 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)

6. Excludability Low High R I V A L R Y 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 Table 1: Extension products by the nature of economic characteristics of information (based on Umali and Schwartz, 1994, Figure 3.2, p. 24).

7. Knowledge delivered by extension • Embodied • in market goods such as purchased inputs, best left to private sector • Disembodied • general, non-excludable informationPG • specialized, excludable information TlG

8. 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

9. 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

10. Public-Private Partnerships • A major emerging trend • But experience still rather limited in most developing countries! • An active learning opportunity?

11. 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 …

12. …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

13. Some Extension Modalities • Training and Visit (T&V) Extension • Decentralization /Devolution • Fee-for-Service and Privatized Extension • Farmer Field Schools

14. 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!

15. Public Extension Service Weather and Pests Private Sector: Input suppliers, processors, consultants HH welfare Media: Audio, Video, Print Field Days Demonstrations/ Field trials Impact Model Food Security Land Quality Friends, neighbors, Innovative farmers Adaptive Research Credit Risk Spillovers Farmer Organizations, NGOs Household objectives Output Basic Research Indigenous Systems Labor Prices Infrastructure Education Farm Decision-Making Technology Generation Impact Knowledge Delivery Activities Output Outcomes Results Inputs Research-Extension Links Recommendations Training Feedback Institutional Development Sustainability Efficacy Plurality Access Contact Distribution Awareness Adoption Productivity Efficiency Source: Gautam, Madhur (2000): Agricultural Extension – The Kenya Experience: An Impact Evaluation. Operations Evaluation Department, The World Bank.

16. 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

17. 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