Presentation on the Agricultural Extension and Advisory services Emphasizing on POLICY by Dr. Charles Masangano

1. By
Charles Masangano
cmasangano@bunda.luanar.mw
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4.  Agricultural extension has historically been
thought of as the process of extending
scientifically proven knowledge and policies to
users in order for them to improve their
agricultural productivity.
◦ The word extension implies extending something.
 This was premised on the assumption that
Scientific knowledge was always better than
farmers or users knowledge and experiences.
 The implication being that extension should be a
top down process where farmers and users are at
the receiving end.
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5.  Does not take farmers interests and concerns
into consideration
 Does not value farmer knowledge and
experiences and hence not able to build on
indigenous knowledge systems
 Some technologies promoted may not be
suitable to farmers conditions
 Narrow based, only concerned with farmers
and producers among the many value chain
actors
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6.  This assumption has however, historically
driven the design and implementation of
agricultural extension services in most
countries including Malawi.
◦ The coercive system, master farmer system of the
colonial period, the progressive farmer system as
well as the block extension system (T&V) were all
premised on this assumption.
◦ In addition, extension services were basically
considered to be the responsibility of the public
sector.
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7.  Low response from farmers.
 Reasons:
◦ Farmer needs and interests were not taken into
consideration.
 One example was promotion of cash crops intended for
export such as cotton and tobacco when farmers were more
concerned with ensuring food self sufficiency.
◦ Promoting technologies which were not suitable for
farmers situations.
 An example is promoting capital intensive technologies
which most low resource farmers could not afford.
 One result being the perception that farmers had “that
extension is for resource rich and credit worthy club
members
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8.  Valuable farmer knowledge and experiences
were always left out of the development
process.
 The whole responsibility of extension service
provision was lefty to the public sector and
this had its own challenges.
◦ Public sector resources were and are consistently
shrinking.
◦ Governments could not maintain provision of high
quality extension services with the limited
resources.
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9.  There is recognition now that extension and
advisory services should
◦ Be driven by democratic principles, central of which
being that farmers should demand services and
extension should respond to such demands.
 EAS will thereby be addressing felt needs
◦ Be accountable to clients
◦ Allow more service providers to participate thereby
allowing farmers and users to have greater choices,
diversity and quality of services
◦ Diversify the resource base by mobilizing other
service providers to participate in service provision
as well as financing extension and advisory services
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10. ◦ Ensure that extension services that address purely
private interests are paid for by private resources.
◦ Be well coordinated so as to avoid duplication of
efforts and also avoid sending contradictory
messages to users especially farmers.
◦ Be more inclusive and perform a wide range of
roles.
◦ Inclusivity in this cases means taking an innovation
systems approach involving more players such as
value chain actors including producers, service
providers, researchers, policy makers and many
other stake holders.
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11.  Roles of agricultural extension and advisory
services must include:
◦ Facilitating knowledge management activities
◦ Disseminating new knowledge and technologies
◦ Facilitating development of networks
◦ Organising and facilitating innovation platforms
◦ Organising producer groups
◦ Facilitating access to input and output markets
◦ Facilitating access to credit
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12.  Revised its policy in 2000 where the vision
was that:
◦ All farmers able to demand extension services.
◦ All farmers have access to high quality extension
services.
◦ There is pluralism in provision and delivery of
extension services.
 Building on distinctive competencies of various service
providers.
 Services offered at decentralized levels.
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13.  Services that are accountable to those
demanding and using them.
 Services that contribute to addressing
national concerns of improvement of
livelihoods
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14.  The district agricultural extension services
system (DAESS) implementation guide was
therefore developed in order to facilitate
implementation of the policy.
 The main purpose of the DAESS is to create a
mechanism for enabling farmers to identify,
organise and articulate their agricultural felt
needs for appropriate action from relevant
stakeholders.
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15.  The specific objectives of the DAESS are:
◦ To organise farmers’ agricultural needs
◦ To pool service providers and related resources in
order to address farmers needs
◦ To instill a sense of ownership and self reliance in
agricultural programmes among farmers
◦ To foster coordination among stakeholders in
service provision
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16.  I think the country came up with the right
type of policy and implementation guide
considering that we are in a political
environment of multiparty democracy with a
decentralized governance system where there
is a multitude of extension service providers.
 There are of cause a few areas that need to
be further reflected on in both the policy and
DAESS.
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17.  Experiences show that achievement of the
vision of the policy and objectives of DAESS
are mixed.
 There are significant achievements in some
of the principles and objectives of the policy
DAESS and poor performance in other
principles and objectives.
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18.  There is need to facilitate agricultural
development by promoting agricultural
products across their value chains.
◦ There are various players in these value chains
including producers, processors, transporters,
wholesalers, retailers etc.
◦ All these need extension and advisory services.
◦ This is why there is emphasis on agricultural
innovation systems and most experts refer to
agricultural extension and advisory services.
◦ The policy needs to be all encompassing. Some of
the clients require extension services while others
require advisory services.
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19.  The issues of coordination, harmonization,
standardization and quality control of extension
and advisory services need to be thoroughly
thought through. Access to high quality
extension and advisory services to all who need
them can not be ensured if the policy does not
provide adequate guidelines for addressing these
issues.
 Provision of agricultural extension services needs
to be properly regulated and the policy needs to
provide for such regulatory mechanisms
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20.  DAESS is a good concept as it provides a
system through which various extension
approaches, methods and activities can be
implemented. It provides a good mechanism
for:
◦ Coordination of extension, harmonization and
standardization of extension activities
◦ Accountability to users and
◦ It is in accordance to decentralization system
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21.  The system is only working in very few
districts such as Rumphi and Ntcheu.
 Most stakeholders do not use the system.
◦ It is not uncommon to find a technical department
in the ministry working straight with farmers
without involving any DAESS structures.
◦ Similarly, other service providers such as NGOs,
private companies and farmer organizations tend
not to work with DAES structures
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22.  Most of the stakeholders at district level tend
not to be willing to financially support the
system.
 Studies show that most stakeholders do not
have a clear understanding of the system. It is
not uncommon to hear sentiments such as
DAESS is for DAES only.
 There is a serious shortage of field extension
staff.
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23.  There is need for more sensitization to various
stakeholders on DAESS. This sensitization should include:
◦ All the technical departments in the ministry
◦ Local government staff at district level
◦ All extension service providers
◦ Local communities
 There is need to put in place mechanisms for regulating
activities of extension service providers. DAESS would be
better placed to play that role.
 Roles and responsibilities of various players need to be
more clearly specified (CFA needed here)
 Need to continue to promote establishment of farmer
organizations.
 Need to harmonize various guides eg model village, lead
farmer concept with DAESS
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24.  There is need to:
◦ Review the concept to include some of the missing
links such as a national stakeholder panel where
issues can be discussed at a national level. MaFAAS
if formerly mandated can play such a role
◦ Need to consider structures starting from the
village level rather than group village level. The
village is a more stable and naturally existing
structure in our communities and is likely to be
more effective in promoting development activities.
◦ DAESS guide should be a flexible instrument with
adaptability to local conditions
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25.  Need to make issues of extension policy more
prominent in the national agricultural policy
 Need to move up the responsibility for ensuring
that DAESS is being implemented.
 The office of the CAETS may be more appropriate
in promoting DAESS
◦ This office needs to take primary responsibility for
implementing DAESS
◦ This office need to see to it that activities of technical
departments as well as other service providers are in
accordance to DAESS
◦ DAES should provide technical expertise for
implementing DAESS
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26.  There is need to train more extension staff in
order to reduce staff/farmer ratio in order to
increase farmer and other users’ access to
extension and advisory services.
 There is also need to improve the working and
living conditions of extension staff in rural areas.
◦ Poor housing conditions, lack of utilities such as potable
water, electricity, internet connectivity, transport
facilities, protective clothes and many other more make
working conditions for extension workers very
unattractive. The responsibility for correcting these
problems lies mostly in our hands.
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27.  Extension and advisory services need to be
more versatile in responding to current and
emerging challenges in the agricultural
sector.
 The issue of climate change and drought that
Malawi is experiencing this year are very
good examples.
◦ More than 90% of all the extension and advisory
service providers in the country are all gathered in
this room today. What have we done to help Malawi
to appropriately respond to these challenges?
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28.  The advantages of ICT based extension
methods need to not be emphasized.
◦ The ability to reach many clients in a short time,
◦ The ability to send messages in a timely manner,
◦ The increasing ability to create interactive systems
of ICT based extension
 All point to fact that we need to embrace the
usage of this technology more and more to
increase our impact.
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29.  THANK YOU
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