CHANGES IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION IN ASIA
With the rapid economic development in many Asian nations there is also a lot of change in agriculture and there should be major changes in agricultural extension.
Which changes are desirable is discussed in the book A.W. van den Ban and R.K. Samanta, eds. (2006) Changes roles of agricultural extension in Asian Nations. New Delhi, B.R. Publishing Corporation by 18 Asian and 6 American and European extension scientists and managers of whom 3 got their Ph.D. in Wageningen.
With the growing gap in income between farm and urban families poverty alleviation is the major goal of extension in Asia. In the Green Revolution extension has made an important contribution to increasing the yields of cereals. This has prevented that millions of people died from hunger, but it also resulted in a decrease in cereal prices and therefore in poverty among farmers. At the same time the demand for high value agricultural products increased both in Asia and globally. Farmers can reduce their poverty if they produce these products in an efficient way and sell them through an effective marketing system. Therefore agricultural extension should teach farmers to produce product for which there is a good demand in the market and to increase their power in the marketing and input supply system. It is not possible to recommend farmers how this should be done, but extension should increase the ability of the farmers to make these managerial decisions themselves individually or in groups.
The challenge is how to develop an extension service which can perform this task. This book of 435 pages is available at the secretariat of Communication Science for 15 Euro + mailing costs. Indian books are cheaper than European books.
Anne van den Ban