I am Botir Dosov, facilitating an Innovation Platform within the CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Systems in Central Asia, and providing consultancy to the Central Asia and the Caucasus (CAC) Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (CACAARI), and further will be much involved in strengthening the regional network/forum on rural advisory services for 8 countries in the CAC region, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. My first contributions for this email conference would be related to Question 4.4 in the conference background document: Are there regional specificities regarding rural advisory services for family farms? Ref: Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the soviet republics obtained their independence, most of those newly independent countries in the Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus (CAC) region reoriented their economies from a centralized planning system towards the market driven systems and have experienced variable levels of economic growth. The collapse led to a drastic economic decline until the mid-1990s, and the role of family farms naturally became critically important for provision of food security, while countries experienced robust economic growth, driven by government reforms. In some cases, those reforms turned into protracted crises that first of all negatively influenced the well-being of family farms. Under such circumstances, enhancing or strengthening of rural advisory services (RAS) was not much at the focus of those national wide reforms and agricultural development programs. The case of Armenia is very well explained by Mr. Harutyun Gevorgyan (Message 28). The agricultural policies implying RAS for family farms in the different countries of the region vary, and do not emphasise "RAS for family farms" in many CAC countries. Thus, some of the countries in post-soviet areas conducted a thorough land reform and the agricultural land was distributed among the population resulting in large numbers of family farms. In others, the transformation happened through privatisation of the existing collective and state farm structures. In many countries, RAS for family farms per se or RAS at all were not stipulated in rural/agricultural development policies. Unfortunately, this approach was limited by the lack of understanding among policy-makers of the RAS for farmers, particularly for smallholders and family farms, and why RAS play a crucial role in increasing agricultural productivity. Thus, in reality, smallholders and family lag behind and out of focus of government interventions in agriculture and rural areas, and furthermore in the RAS system. It has to be emphasized that poor linkages between researchers, extension agents, farmers, especially women farmers and family, and policy makers are a common issue to many countries in the region. The low interaction as well as undeveloped advisory and delivery services undermines the effectiveness of technology transfer to family farms, which thus deprives them of innovations oriented to improve productivity of family farms and smallholders. Most of the CA countries do not pay adequate attention to aspects of technology transfer and hardly support the extension system, through which small scale technologies and innovations could serve the needs of family farms. In most cases, this is due to the low profitability of organizations providing services or the lack of public and private funding, and thus RAS in the CAC region are not oriented to family farms, although they produce the essential part of basic agricultural commodities, such as milk, meat, eggs, poultry, fruits and vegetables, and therefore play the critical role for insuring food security in the region. Summary: Here we are discussing HOW to tailor RAS to family farms (FF). For the Central Asia and Southern Caucasus region, prior to discussing HOW, we should agree on WHAT are RAS for FF, and widely advocate and agree on WHY do we need to shape RAS for FF, where governments still are the key drivers of reforms, and the public sector does not substantially support RAS, and prioritizing the investments to other, most profitable niches and/or domains with low levels of sustainability, and where the RAS system is poorly supported and developed. Botir Dosov, PhD Strategic Innovation Platform Coordinator CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Systems in Central Asia Technical Adviser Central Asia and the Caucasus Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (CACAARI) 6, Osiyo Street, P.O. Box 4375, Tashkent, 100000, Uzbekistan Tel: (+998 71) 2372130/69 Fax: (+998 71) 1207125 Mobile: (+998 98) 128 63 22 e-mail: dosov.b (at) gmail.com [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