How much do Public Extension Workers contribute to market-oriented agricultural advisory services? Lessons from Northern Uganda (Published)
Market-oriented agricultural advisory services for smallholders are critical to achieving food, income, and economic security in developing nations. Using a market systems view, the study determined the extent to which decentralized public agricultural extension workers delivered specific services for market-oriented agriculture and the enabling and disabling factors. A survey of 184 public agricultural extension officers from Northern Uganda was conducted. Results: The perceived extent to which the extension workers engaged in agricultural risk identification and management, developing farmer organizations, and ensuring farm inputs supply was a mean score of 2.38, 2.31, and 2.28 out of 3 respectively, and between 83.6% and 86.6% of the extension workers engaged routinely with them. The average engagement in agribusiness and markets was 2.00. Most market-oriented activities were engaged in albeit in selected seasons. Enablers included government policies, stakeholder support, and frequent training while limited government support, high extension farmer ratio, and limited leadership on gender and youth inclusion were disablers.
Keywords: Decentralization, Market-oriented agricultural advisory services, disablers, enablers, public extension workers
Analysis of the Impact of Devolution of the Agriculture Extension System in Nepal (Published)
The political changes and reformation initiated the agriculture extension devolution to a lower level in the 2000s in Nepal. The federal system devolved the agriculture extension to local government to bring changes in the delivery system, institutional role, and farmers’ access to knowledge development and financial resources. The research has analysed the impact of the agriculture extension devolution to the local level in the last twenty years through a structured literature review. Specifically, it has been identified that the increase in government institutions at the local level allowed farmers to receive extension services from field-level institutions. However, lack of accountability towards farmers, limited human resources, and low coordination between government institutions have impacted service delivery. Furthermore, the study shows that the devolution of agriculture extension has provided the private sector, development partners, and field-level extension actors to support government institutions by sharing the role of the extension service provider.
Keywords: Decentralization, Federalism, agriculture extension, devolution