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How to Make Agricultural Extension Demand-Driven? the Case of India’S Agricultural Extension Policy

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How to Make Agricultural Extension Demand-Driven? the Case of India’S Agricultural Extension Policy View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Research Papers in Economics IFPRI Discussion Paper 00729 November 2007 How to Make Agricultural Extension Demand-Driven? The Case of India’s Agricultural Extension Policy Regina Birner, International Food Policy Research Institute and Jock R. Anderson, World Bank Development Strategy and Governance Division INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) was established in 1975. IFPRI is one of 15 agricultural research centers that receive principal funding from governments, private foundations, and international and regional organizations, most of which are members of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTORS AND PARTNERS IFPRI’s research, capacity strengthening, and communications work is made possible by its financial contributors and partners. IFPRI gratefully acknowledges generous unrestricted funding from Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the World Bank. IFPRI Discussion Paper 00729 November 2007 How to Make Agricultural Extension Demand-Driven? The Case of India’s Agricultural Extension Policy Regina Birner, International Food Policy Research Institute and Jock R. Anderson, World Bank Development Strategy and Governance Division PUBLISHED BY INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE 2033 K Street, NW Washington, DC 20006-1002 USA Tel.: +1-202-862-5600 Fax: +1-202-467-4439 Email: [email protected] www.ifpri.org Notices: 1 Effective January 2007, the Discussion Paper series within each division and the Director General’s Office of IFPRI were merged into one IFPRI-wide Discussion Paper series. The new series begins with number 00689, reflecting the prior publication of 688 discussion papers within the dispersed series. The earlier series are available on IFPRI’s website at www.ifpri.org/pubs/otherpubs.htm#dp. 2 IFPRI Discussion Papers contain preliminary material and research results. They have not been subject to formal external reviews managed by IFPRI’s Publications Review Committee but have been reviewed by at least one internal and/or external reviewer. They are circulated in order to stimulate discussion and critical comment. Copyright 2007 International Food Policy Research Institute. All rights reserved. Sections of this material may be reproduced for personal and not-for-profit use without the express written permission of but with acknowledgment to IFPRI. To reproduce the material contained herein for profit or commercial use requires express written permission. To obtain permission, contact the Communications Division at [email protected]. Contents Acknowledgments............................................................................................................................v Abstract.......................................................................................................................................... vi 1. Introduction.................................................................................................................................1 2. Concept of Demand-Driven Services .........................................................................................4 3. Agricultural Extension in India: Insights from the 2003 Situation Assessment Survey of Farmers ......................................................................................................................................6 4. Approaches to Making Agricultural Extension Demand-Driven .............................................11 5. Discussion.................................................................................................................................28 6. Concluding Remarks.................................................................................................................33 References......................................................................................................................................34 iii List of Tables 1. Options for providing and financing agricultural advisory services........................................... 5 2. Percentage of farmer households reporting good quality information on modern agricultural technology provided by various sources..................................................................................... 8 3. Distribution of farmer households suggesting improvements in information provided by various sources............................................................................................................................ 9 4. Percentage of farmer households trying and/or adopting recommended practices in modern agricultural technology ..................................................................................................9 5. Membership of farmer-based organizations ............................................................................. 10 List of Figures 1. Percentage of farmer households accessing information on modern agricultural technology through various sources .............................................................................................................. 7 2. Farmer households’ satisfaction with the quality of information from various information sources......................................................................................................................................... 8 3. Structure of the Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA) ............................. 19 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to acknowledge the valuable comments we received from Rasheed V. Sulaiman, Katharina Raabe and an anonymous reviewer, and from the participants of the International Conference on Social Science Perspectives in Agricultural Research and Development held in New Delhi, February 15-18, 2006, where an earlier version of this paper was presented. v ABSTRACT Many countries have recognized the need to revive agricultural advisory or extension services (the terms are used interchangeably here) as a means of using agriculture as an engine of pro-poor growth; reaching marginalized, poor, and female farmers; and addressing new challenges, such as environmental degradation and climate change. In spite of ample experience with extension reform worldwide, identifying the reform options most likely to make extension more demand-driven remains a major challenge. The concept of demand-driven services implies making extension more responsive to the needs of all farmers, including women and those who are poor and marginalized. It also implies making extension more accountable to farmers and, as a consequence, more effective. This essay discusses various options for providing and financing agricultural advisory services, which involve the public and private sectors as well as a third sector comprising nongovernmental organizations and farmer-based organizations. We review the market and state failures, and the “community” failures (failures of non-governmental and farmer-based organizations) inherent in existing models of providing and financing agricultural extension services and then outline strategies to address those failures and make extension demand-driven. Then we examine India’s Policy Framework for Agricultural Extension, which has demand-driven extension as one of its major objectives, and review available survey information on the state of extension in India. We conclude that although the framework proposes a wide range of strategies to make agricultural extension demand-driven, it is less specific in addressing the challenges inherent in those strategies. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the strategies proposed in the framework will be able to address one of the major problems identified by farm household surveys: access to agricultural extension. Key words: Demand-driven agricultural advisory services; extension reform; India vi 1. INTRODUCTION In recent years, many developing countries have reaffirmed the essential role that agricultural extension can play in agricultural development (Birner et al. 2006; Anderson 2007). This renewed interest in extension is linked to the rediscovery of the role that agriculture needs to play in reducing persistent rural poverty (World Bank 2007b). Yet negative experiences with extension in the past have sparked considerable debate worldwide about the best way to provide and finance agricultural extension. What are the roles of the public sector, the private sector, and the third sector—nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and farmer-based organizations—in providing and financing extension? How will the agricultural sector meet new challenges, such as helping smallholders access global markets and meet their standards? How can farmers cope with environmental degradation and climate change and respond to health challenges such as livestock pandemics? How can extension address the needs of women farmers and disadvantaged groups? What are the best uses of new information and communication technologies? All these questions are highly relevant for agricultural development in India (see, e.g., Vyas 2003). In addition, agricultural extension faces the challenge of establishing a well-managed, effective, and accountable system that meets the needs of hundreds of thousands of farmers engaged in diverse and complex farming systems; the associated problems of monitoring
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