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

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Thu, 18 Dec 2014 11:43:18 +0100
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This is Huu-Nhuan Nguyen again.

Regarding question 4.5 about how to improve the outreach and impacts of rural advisory services for small farmers, from my research experience, I would like to share my opinions about it. In this message, I focus on discussing why and how communicating impacts among stakeholders is important for improving the outreach and impacts of rural advisory services for small farmers. 

First, I believe that impact assessment of rural advisory services should be well integrated in any rural advisory services to increase development impacts of agricultural extension intervention. Impact sharing helps key stakeholders, especially small farmers, to understand well about the contribution of rural advisory services to social, economic and environmental development of target communities and regions. Designing appropriate communication strategies for communicating impact assessment of rural advisory services to family farms should pay much attention to how and for what purposes impact findings could be utilized for improving outreach of rural advisory services. 

There are two main groups of impacts findings users: local stakeholders and beneficiaries  (such as local farmers, extension staff, local traders, and local policy makers) and external stakeholders (such as agricultural research institutions, international development agencies and high-level policy makers). Without having clear and appropriate strategies for these groups to utilize impacts of rural advisory services, we could not scale-out and scale-up successful agricultural technologies or innovations to achieve wider and multi-layer impacts. 

Second, in my point of view, communication of impacts of rural advisory services for small farmers should therefore pay attention to these two key groups of impact users:

- To local stakeholders and beneficiaries: Communicating impacts should be done right after, or after a short period impact assessment processes. Impact findings could be shared in both impact assessment and impact sharing processes. Communicating impact findings with local stakeholders and beneficiaries should be flexibly conducted depending on a particular social context and availability of time and financial resources. It could be carried out in the field or at most convenient places for the participation of different stakeholders, especially vulnerable groups. Simple and understandable languages should also be carefully considered when disseminating impact findings for meeting different levels of education, or relevant skills of local stakeholders, especially poor women and minority ethnic groups.
- To research institutions, donors and higher level policy-makers: After sharing and getting feedback from key stakeholders and beneficiaries, written report types in combination with publications could be produced and shared among research partners and policy makers. Dissemination of visual products such as videos, photo stories and posters in international conferences, university lectures and seminars, agricultural extension trainings could be an effective way to sustaining impacts. The promotion of research products and innovations through websites and electronic forums, email conferences also helps to promote impact sharing to wider range of audience. 

Nguyen Huu Nhuan
PhD Candidate
University of Queensland, 
Australia
Mobile:+61 450 268 689
Email: huunhuan.nguyen (at) uqconnect.edu.au
nguyennhuan1977 (at) gmail.com

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