Agricultural Extension Ideologies and the Quest for A Sustainable Agriculture: Some Thoughts and Speculations

Abstract

This paper makes an attempt at reviewing agricultural extension ideologies or perspectives and their influence on stakeholder’s world-view in relation to sustainable agriculture. Specifically, the paper brings together several perspectives that have been suggested to encourage farmers to do things differently in the interest of a sustainable agricultural industry. Judging from the amount of resources spent on agricultural extension by developing countries, one comes to the conclusion that it is considered to be very important. There have been numerous attempts to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of agricultural extension worldwide, hence the perspectives described and discussed in the paper are but a drop in the bucket full of perspectives. The common factor among all the extension perspectives is the desire to bring about a productive agriculture today and tomorrow, which in essence, is the writer’s simple definition of sustainable agriculture. The perspectives discussed embrace both hard and soft systems. The transfer of technology (TOT) and the earlier farming systems perspectives are discussed as examples of hard system perspectives. In the group of soft systems, the paper discusses the actor oriented perspective, the network perspective, the agricultural knowledge information perspective (AKIS) or simply the knowledge information system perspective (KIS) and the rapid appraisal of agricultural knowledge system (RAAKS) perspective (which is an offshoot of AKIS). The paper concludes by pointing out that this multiplicity of perspectives (ideologies) may bring confusion to the technology developer, disseminator and user. But so long as the perspectives increase understanding about how people develop their world views in the area of agricultural development, they are worth the effort. This is especially crucial to such an important theme as agricultural sustainability. How do we bring about rapid adoption by farmers and others, technologies that ensure the sustainability of the industry through the agency of agricultural extension? The perspectives described and discussed in the paper attempt to answer this precise question. The problems associated with ‘the tragedy of the commons’ (despite claims to the contrary) are all real to us all. Overgrazing, deforestation, forest and range fires, cultivation down steep slopes, disregard of laws protecting catchment areas, over-dependence on chemicals in agriculture, are some of the problems that have attracted a lot of scientific and political attention, for a long time. The results of agricultural extension and research are quite often not commensurate with the effort expended, when measured against various criteria of agricultural success including sustainability. Therefore, this paper’s small contribution is to get agricultural scientists, extension practitioners and other stakeholders thinking more deeply as to “why we continue to get low production and productivity responses from the majority of small farmers in developing countries despite considerable efforts on the part of technology producers and disseminators to improve the sector’s performance? Why do we continue to experience degradation of the land resource despite our efforts”? These are vexing questions that will continue to exercise our minds in the 21st century as they did in the 20th century.