The Economic Impact of Agricultural Extension: A Review

Abstract

The history of economic development shows that few countries have achieved sustained economic growth without first, or simultaneously, developing their agricultural sector.' In most developing countries, agriculture is the most important economic activity providing income, employment, and foreign exchange. Without an efficient agricultural sector, a country is severely constrained in its ability to feed itself or import foreign products for domestic consumption and development. Rapid technological advances in agriculture have occurred since World War II. These advances have induced great changes in agricultural production and also highlighted the importance of a rapid and efficient transfer of advanced knowledge to the farmer. When farmers become aware of the availability of new technology, they may have inaccurate perceptions of the related costs and benefits, as information availability may be limited. As farmers' decisions are based on their perceptions, their resource allocation and technology choice will deviate from the social optimum if perceptions do not coincide with the correct attributes of the technology. Both society and the farmers as individuals would gain from improved information, and theoretically there should exist a market for information. However, information on improved agricultural technology is often a public good because the provider of the information cannot exclude other potential users from free access to information provided to one user, and the value of the information is not directly affected by the number of users. While many instances of market activities in various aspects of agricultural information are observed (e.g., specialized information on pest man