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

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"Moderated conference on rural advisory services for family farms: 1-18 December 2014" <[log in to unmask]>
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Wed, 3 Dec 2014 13:16:58 +0100
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My name is Francis Chilenga from Malawi, a Senior Agricultural Extensionist in the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development. I have worked with small-scale farmers for the past 10 years in areas related to agricultural technology dissemination, local institutional development and strengthening, and documentation and promotion of local agricultural innovations. I would like to focus on question 4.5 of the conference background document, i.e. "How to improve the outreach and impact of rural advisory services for family farms?".



As a country extension services is grappling with reduced funding and a decreased extension worker to farmers ratio of 1:2500. FAO recommendation if not mistaken is roughly 1:800. As a response to this, the government plus other stakeholders have promoted farmer to farmer knowledge exchange through a concept known as Lead Farmer concept. The objective being to reach as many farm families as possible with information on agriculture. Agricultural resource centres are also being piloted but are also faced with inadequacies in funding. The point I would like to advance is rural resource centres furnished with information and communication technologies (ICTs) are a viable way of reaching many small farmers. Fields for demonstrations can be set aside and this can be scheduled for specific days. Resource centres can include DVDs, Internet with high connectivity. In addition, voice activity information services are a better way of reaching farmers than SMSs because of high literacy levels prevalent in most  African countries. 



Lead farmers can also be mobilised to form Lead farmer networks thus facilitating knowledge exchange. Recorded extension messages (Podcasts) can be handily used by Lead farmers where an extension worker acting as a mentor is not available. These can be played on MP3 devices thus enabling the lead farmer to reach as many small farmers as possible.



But the question still remains is funding there? Who is able to do that, NGO or Government?



Francis Wakisa Chilenga

Senior Agricultural Extensionist

Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security 

Karonga 

Agricultural Development Division 

P/Bag 4 

Karonga 

Malawi

cell: +265 888 384 679

e-mail: fwchilenga (at) yahoo.co.uk



[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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