Abstract
Policymakers in Sri Lanka are seeking for cost-effective extension systems due to poor governance and limited budgets of current agricultural extension programs. Recently, there has been increasing interest in social learning as a mean of technology dissemination at a low cost. Therefore, this paper reviews the literature related to social learning and social-network-based agricultural extension (SNBAE) in developing countries to identify its possibility in information and technology dissemination in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, it looks at the present agriculture extension system of the food crop sector in Sri Lanka to clarify the potential of SNBAE for information and technology flow to the grassroot level. The review of the literature shows that SNBAE has positive effects on the effectiveness of knowledge and skill transfer to peers and neighbours. The overview of the agricultural extension systems in food crop sector in Sri Lanka shows that the decentralized agricultural extension system implemented from 1989 failed to bridge the agricultural information and technology gap, especially due to insufficiency of agricultural extension officers at the village level. However, the analysis of agricultural extension system of food crop sector shows that SNBAE has succeeded to some degree in narrowing the information and technology gap between extension officers and rural small-scale farmers.
Highlights
Agricultural development is widely recognized as a pre-condition for sustainable growth in developing countries.An important element of many agricultural development strategies is the adoption of new technologies (Anderson and Feder, 2007)
This paper reviewed the literature related to Social Network Based Agricultural Extension Approaches (SNBAE) in developing countries, to identify its possibility in technology and information dissemination
The present agricultural extension system of the food crop sector in Sri Lanka was considered to clarify the potential of social-network-based agricultural extension (SNBAE) for information and technology flow to the grassroot level
Summary
Agricultural development is widely recognized as a pre-condition for sustainable growth in developing countries. There are many reasons for the slow rate and improper agricultural technology adoption These include the problems of innovations themselves (Feder and Savastano 2006; Suri 2011), policy decisions (Weerahewa 2017), contextual factors Most of the extension services rely on common recommendations, which are unlikely to be relevant for much of the farming populations due to the heterogeneity among smallholders (Suri 2011) These issues, combined with insufficient public funding and political pressure have motivated policymakers to find alternative agricultural extension modalities (World Bank 2015). This paper reviews literature related to social learning and SNBAE in developing countries to identify the potential of the SNBAE approaches on information and technology dissemination at a low cost.
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