AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION:
Towards Innovative
Strategies?
Jock R. Anderson, UNE, WB, IFPRI
drawing on work with Gershon Feder
DEC/ARD, World Bank, Washington, DC
Extension: Good Thing for ARD?
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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.
Bob Evenson’s latest data
musings on Green Rev’n
Clusters by
GRMV
Adoption
Extension
Workers per
billion ha
Crop Value
per ha
Fertilizer
per 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
Many significant publicgood attributes
80% of extension services are
publicly-funded and delivered by civil
servants
 12% provided by NGOs etc.
 8% by private providers
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 Developing
countries have 90%
of the >0.5m extension workers
Conceptual Frameworks
but not for today!
Information as an Input to
Productivity Growth—Demand for
Information
 Welfare Economics Contextualization
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Perfect Markets: rivalry, excludability,
appropriability, symmetric information,
complete markets with no distortions or
externalities (eg, Hanson & Just 2001)
Table 1: Extension products by the nature of economic characteristics of information (based on Umali and Schwartz, 1994,
Figure 3.2, p. 24).
Excludability
Low
R
I
V
A
L
R
Y
High
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
Knowledge delivered by
extension
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Embodied
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in market goods such as purchased
inputs, best left to private sector
Disembodied
general, non-excludable information PG
 specialized, excludable information TlG
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Private Extension Services
and Cost Recovery
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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 …
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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
Public Financing of
Extension?
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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
Public-Private
Partnerships
A major emerging trend
 But experience still rather limited in
most developing countries!
 An active learning opportunity?
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A Framework for Analyzing
Extension Organizations
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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 …
…more on Framework
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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
Some Extension Modalities
Training and Visit (T&V) Extension
 Decentralization /Devolution
 Fee-for-Service and Privatized
Extension
 Farmer Field Schools
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The Impact of Extension
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In principle, as for any investment
appraisal
Two broad approaches to estimating
RORs
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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!
Impact Model
Friends, neighbors,
Innovative farmers
Spillovers
Adaptive
Research
Food Security
Credit
Land Quality
Risk
Public Extension Service
Weather
and Pests
Farmer Organizations, NGOs
Private Sector: Input suppliers,
processors, consultants
Household
objectives
HH
welfare
Output
Media: Audio, Video, Print
Basic Indigenous
Research Systems
Field Days
Labor
Demonstrations/ Field trials
Technology Generation
Inputs
ResearchExtension Links
Recommendations
Training
Feedback
Knowledge Delivery
Activities
Institutional
Development
Sustainability
Efficacy
Plurality
Infrastructure
Prices
Education
Farm Decision-Making
Impact
Output
Outcomes
Results
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.
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
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Much yet to be done for needed
extension services to the poor
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Informed by the lessons of the past,
governments should be able
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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
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which is why we are gathered!
Horses for courses
Bottom line; let innovation be informed by the
lessons of experience