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Moderated conference on rural advisory services for family farms: 1-18 December 2014

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Thu, 11 Dec 2014 16:48:03 +0100
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This is Guy Faure, deputy director of the “Innovation in Agricultural and Agri-food systems” Joint Research Unit in Montpellier (France).  I am an economist and carry out research in Western Africa and Latin America focusing on Farmers’ organizations, Farm management advisory services, Regional “innovation systems” (networks between actors to produce knowledge and impact of research.



The scaling up and scaling out of innovative extension approach is a huge issue. Experiments in Management Advice for Family Farms (MAFF) for nearly two decades in many Francophone African countries have sought to promote comprehensive advice to farms, one that is based on learning methods. Questions now arise on how to increase the number of producers with access to advisory services and how to improve institutional and financial sustainability of advisory mechanisms. 



To address such questions a workshop was organized on 13-15 November 2012 in Bohicon, Benin with actors involved in MAFF activities in more than 10 countries. On the initiative of CIRAD and the French Agency for Development (AFD), the workshop was organized in conjunction with Inter-Réseaux, University of Parakou (Benin), PADYP (an AFD project in Benin) and FEPAB (a farmers organization in Burkina Faso) on improving the sustainability of approaches for management advice for family farms (MAFF) in Africa (http://www.g-fras.org/en/gfras/434-management-advice-for-family-farms-in-west-africa.html).



A participatory evaluation was carried out in order to identify the constraints and perspectives to scale them up and/or out and to improve the sustainability. Four main criteria were used based on a systemic framework to assess extension system: (i) modalities of mechanism of governance, (ii) MAFF funding modalities, (iii) modalities for capacity and skill building for advisers and other actors, and (iv) modalities to adapt advisory services to regional or national situations. 



The results show that scaling out and scaling-up issues entail addressing the institutional dimensions of advisory services. In the case of MAFF, there is evidence of the need to strengthen the role played by Producers’ Organizations in the governance mechanisms in order to better orient advice, reduce the costs and increase the sustainability beyond the projects’ investments. Farmer extension workers appeared as a key factor for sustainability and extension of advisory services to a larger audience. New promising opportunities to train advisors are observed in order to better insert training programmes in permanent national organizations. Funding of advisory services remains a challenge even if some relevant experiences do exist. Efforts are made in reshaping delivery models with less costly and time-consuming methods. But all the analysed cases face difficulties to address these questions related to the scaling-up and scaling-out. 

Finally there is a need to draw lessons about scaling up and scaling out issues from different innovative extension approach and beyond MAFF experiences. There is a need to design a common framework to be able to compare different innovative extension approachs.



Note, scaling out of advisory services means expanding them geographically or involving more farmers, where scaling up means involving more organizations and building new rules, new arrangements between actors, new funding mechanisms, etc. to address the scaling out issue. See Franzel et al (2004) for more information regarding definitions of scaling up and scaling out.

 

Dr Guy Faure

Directeur Adjoint

CIRAD

UMR Innovation (CIRAD-INRA-Supagro)

tel 00 33 4 67 61 65 87

fax 00 33 4 67 61 44 15

TA C85/15

73 avenue Jean-François Breton

34 398 Montpellier Cedex 5, 

France

http://umr-innovation.cirad.fr/

e-mail: guy.faure (at) cirad.fr



Reference: 

Franzel, S., G.L. Denning, J.P.B. Lillesø and A.R. Mercado, Jr. 2004. Scaling up the impact of agroforestry: Lessons from three sites in Africa and Asia. Agroforestry Systems 61: 329–344, 2004.



[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information, see http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/news/detail/en/c/264776/   



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