RAS-L Archives

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

RAS-L@LISTSERV.FAO.ORG

Options: Use Classic View

Use Monospaced Font
Show HTML Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Thu, 4 Dec 2014 16:59:04 +0100
text/plain (1 lines)
My name is Michelle Carnegie and I am a Social Scientist based at the University of New England, in Australia. I am currently working on a Livelihoods and Extension research project in Myanmar. The project aims to build the capacity of Myanmar government officials and researchers who are tasked with providing education or training on extension, or managing or delivering research and extension services. The focus is on incorporating socio-economic analyses, a livelihoods approach and participatory methodologies into their work, to ultimately improve smallholder farmer livelihoods. 

 

The issue of how to effectively target and tailor extension services to diverse groups of farmers, including those who are very poor and marginalised, is very much at the forefront of my mind just now. Referring to question 4.1 in the conference background document I see these farmers as being in 2 of the 3 suggested broad categories  - certainly subsistence or near subsistence smallholders, but also those who are market oriented, eg they may be selling cash crops but getting low returns as is the case for many farmers in Myanmar's Central Dry Zone who sell their legumes for export to India. Of course very poor and marginalised farmers include both women and men, and farming families, landed and landless, but women generally and female-headed households in particular are more likely to be in this category.



Several conference participants (message 11 – Abdulmojeed Yakubu; message 13 – Paul Zaake; message 21 - Mahesh Chander and message 22 - Datta Rangnekar) have raised their concerns about agricultural extension/rural advisory services having largely by-passed very poor and marginalised farmers, and some have suggested that there should be a shift in effort and resources towards these farmers​​. I have heard the saying "the group that get the most extension need it the least; and the group that get the least, need it the most".  The reality seems to be that of all the financial investment globally that has gone into extension/advisory services for years now, so very little of it has actually made a serious and concerted effort at "tailoring" those services to the most disadvantaged smallholders. 

 

Would it be fair, then, to say that extension/rural advisory services quietly ignore the issue of equity? If so, is this the same across government, private and NGO sectors?

 

On the other hand, some commentators argue that very poor farmers ultimately benefit from broad-based improvements in agricultural activities among better off farmers, which is the most cost-effective way of achieving equity for all. I'm not sure what the evidence base is for this argument, but it seems to be a justification put forward by policy and decision makers for extension/rural advisory service providers not to bother with engaging very poor farmers. The proponents of this argument assume that the benefits of economic and market reforms that stabilise and intensify agriculture in tandem with extension/advisory services that are targeted to better off farmers will "trickle down" to the rest (but never mind how long this might take).

 

I would like to encourage those of you who may happen to have direct experience of working with very poor and marginalised smallholder farmers in an extension/rural advisory capacity, to please share your story. Or through your networks, do you know of cases of success (or failure) in this arena? 

 

Dr Michelle Carnegie

Postdoctoral Research Fellow 

School of Environmental and Rural Science

University of New England 

Armidale NSW 2351 

Australia

Phone  61 2 6773 3475

Email: michelle.carnegie (at) une.edu.au

 

[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/  



########################################################################



To unsubscribe from the RAS-L list, click the following link:

https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=RAS-L&A=1


ATOM RSS1 RSS2