The Quebec Model of Agricultural Extension: A Publicly Led and Regionally Driven Approach through the Programme services-conseils

Aims: The liberalization of the agricultural sector has facilitated the advent of multitude stakeholders with varied profiles involved in the provision of numerous services to agriculture. This study analyzes the advisory and extension services that support the provision of agricultural inputs in two Divisions of the Western Region of Cameroon (Mifi and Menoua).
 Study Design and Methodology: These areas are home to about 60% of the private agricultural input distributors involved in the provision of agricultural advisory and extension services within the region Data collected by questionnaire and interview guide were carried out with 62 agricultural inputs sellers with input shops on the one hand, and 7 managers of a number of organizations involved in the provision of agricultural services on the other hand.
 
 Results: private agricultural input providers use several agricultural advisory and extension approaches: 42% among them use agricultural extension approach, while 32% use advice to the family farm approach, 21% use organizational capacity building advice and 5%, demand driven approaches. The terms for providing these agricultural extension and advisory services depend on the rationalities of each of these providers. Some agricultural extension and advisory services providers (NGOs, CIGs) promote agroecology through the diffusion of organic inputs, while others promote conventional agriculture through the popularization of synthetic chemical inputs. Access to services by beneficiaries are either paid-offerings or free-offerings. Findings also reveal that in some cases, the actions of some of these providers in the field are intertwined and lead to a collaborative relationship, while in other cases providers work completely compartmentalized leading to negative effects and low performance of the local agricultural extension and advisory system.
 Conclusion: The advent of private providers has increased the number of actors with various profiles leading to potential advantages (e.g., includes access to agricultural information). Yet these potentials have not yet been fully valorized in the provision of agricultural advisory and extension services to farmers. And the needs of farmers have only been partially met. It would be equally crucial to factor climate risks as integral part of extension and advisory services.

In Tanzania, agriculture sector is known for employing more than 70% of the total population. Agriculture sector faces many challenges including climate change. Climate change causes low productivity in agriculture; low productivity is caused due to poor implementation of agricultural policies and strategies. This poor implementation of policies has also caused many farmers to be not competent in climate change adaptation. Over the years, provisions of agricultural advice and extension were provided by various approaches, including training and visit extension, participatory approaches, and farmers’ field schools. However, provision of agricultural advisory and extension service is inefficient. Also, in most cases the usage of most agricultural innovations and technologies developed is limited. A literature review indicates that the main reasons given by Tanzanian farmers for not using improved technology are not lack of knowledge or skill, but rather that the technologies do not contribute towards improvements (e.g., the technologies are not profitable or they imply to high risk). Thus, agricultural extension service needs to be geared towards teaching farmers how to develop innovative and cost effective technologies that are contextualized. Limited numbers of agricultural extension staff and less interactivity of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as radio and television, have been mentioned to be among the factors limiting the provision of agricultural advisory and extension services to the majority of farmers in Tanzania. The advancements in ICTs have brought new opportunities for enhancing access to agricultural advisory and extension service for climate change adaptation. In Tanzania, farmers and other actors access agricultural information from various sources such as agricultural extension workers and use of various databases from Internet Services Providers. Also there are different web – and mobile – based farmers’ advisory information systems to support conventional agricultural extension service. These systems are producing bulk amounts of data which makes it difficult for different stakeholders to make an informed decision after data analysis. This calls for the need to develop a tool for data visualization in order to understand hidden patterns from massive data. In this study, a semi-automated text classification was developed to determine the frequently asked keywords from a web and mobile based farmers’ advisory system called UshauriKilimo after being in use for more than 2 years by more than 700 farmers.

Services that make new knowledge available to farmers and assist the farmers to develop their farming and management skills are known as agricultural advisory services. Agricultural extension and advisory services which were traditionally funded, managed and delivered by the public sector are in transitory phase worldwide. They are under increased pressure to reform their purpose as the nature of the agricultural and rural sectors is changing leading to demand for broader support from extension and advisory services. Technology transfer system has to become more demand driven and responsive to farmers need and helping farmers to organize themselves as well as linking them to markets. The advisory services has to also support other pertinent areas besides production such as value addition, market access, trade, agribusiness management, natural resource management, gender, climate change etc. It is in this light that the private advisory services are complementing, supplementing or even replacing the public advisory services.Emergence of paid extension services in agriculture is a recent development, where, professionals have been providing paid consultancy to farmers on technical, especially in high value crops like fruits and flowers.These agri-consultant are mostly retired professors of State Agricultural Universities (SAUs), extension professionals, financial institutions and also provided by Agri-Clinics and Agri-Business Centers (ACABCs) trained by the MANAGE.

Many countries have recognized the need to revive agricultural advisory or extension services (the terms are used interchangeably here) as a means of using agriculture as an engine of pro-poor growth; reaching marginalized, poor, and female farmers; and addressing new challenges, such as environmental degradation and climate change. In spite of ample experience with extension reform worldwide, identifying the reform options most likely to make extension more demand-driven remains a major challenge. The concept of demand-driven services implies making extension more responsive to the needs of all farmers, including women and those who are poor and marginalized. It also implies making extension more accountable to farmers and, as a consequence, more effective. This essay discusses various options for providing and financing agricultural advisory services, which involve the public and private sectors as well as a third sector comprising nongovernmental organizations and farmer-based organizations. We review the market and state failures, and the “community” failures (failures of non-governmental and farmer-based organizations) inherent in existing models of providing and financing agricultural extension services and then outline strategies to address those failures and make extension demand-driven. Then we examine India's Policy Framework for Agricultural Extension, which has demand-driven extension as one of its major objectives, and review available survey information on the state of extension in India. We conclude that although the framework proposes a wide range of strategies to make agricultural extension demand-driven, it is less specific in addressing the challenges inherent in those strategies. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the strategies proposed in the framework will be able to address one of the major problems identified by farm household surveys: access to agricultural extension. from Authors' Abstract

Today’s unsustainable and inequitable food system demand attention from all stakeholders. Malnutrition is on the rise, the food systems activities are responsible for biodiversity loss, water depletion, and land degradation. The top-down agricultural development research and practices have been increasingly called into question. Living lab as both an approach and a platform for supporting agricultural research and extension advisory services could be applicable in a wide range of settings and diverse actors. The main aim of the study was to investigate whether climate change affects smallholder dairy production in Mosop. The author explores the potential of the living lab model for analyzing and building resilient and sustainable dairy production systems. The study employed case study method in Mosop Sub County. The study used key informant interviews and focus group discussions involving project implementers and beneficiaries for data collection. Mosop subcounty documents the promising climate adaptation strategies promoted by the program for climate smart livestock through the LL model. The findings indicated that climate change is taking place and is already affecting dairy production in Mosop. The adaptation strategies most effective in addressing impacts of climate change on dairy production include; feed conservation especially silage making; use of crop residues (maize stovers) and 24H feed fermentation. The findings also indicated that the principle of inclusiveness, transparence and realism according to the living labs models contributed to project outcomes. The livestock extension officers acknowledged that the social learning happening around the networks of pioneer adopters is an innovation mechanism in and rural advisory and agricultural extension. Both the farmer respondents and livestock officers, further agreed that, if supported and motivated this farmer to farmer horizontal learning is an effective model for scaling locally-led climate change adaptation in agrifood system and environmental landscape. The findings indicate the LL model allows the involvement of a diversity of actors; it allows experimentation in reality thus grounding it to co-creation. However, for LL to thrive, it requires an open mindset and reversal learning especially for the agricultural advisory service providers and researchers. This study recommends that there is a need for designing interventions towards resilient dairy production systems but most importantly, these should account for local contexts, priorities and preferences. This will enhance uptake and adoption, consequently enhancing resilience and sustainability.

South Africa’s public agricultural extension services evolved from as early as the beginning of 1900. Agricultural extension is now recognised as a science by the South African Council of Natural Science Profession (SACNASP). This paper presents a philosophical argument that the promotion of sustainable agricultural practices should remain the domain of public extension and advisory services. To provide context, the paper firstly defines agricultural extension and the role extension could play in promoting the five pillars of sustainable agriculture. Secondly, it evaluates the national policy on extension and advisory services to determine the extent to which it addresses the framework of the five pillars for sustainable agriculture. Thirdly, the paper evaluates the Extension Recovery Plan (ERP), norms and standards for agricultural extension and the National Development Plan (NDP) against the framework of sustainable agriculture. The evaluation indicates that only three pillars of sustainability are emphasised. There is a need to subdivide the traditional pillars to align with the full framework for sustainability. The initial findings suggest that, while South Africa’s agricultural extension policy often refers to sustainability and even to sustainable agriculture, they do so using the traditional three-pillared framework of economic, environmental and social sustainability, and thus fall short on key elements essential to sustainable agriculture, namely maintaining and increasing biological productivity, decreasing the level of risk to ensure larger security, protecting the quality of natural resources, ensuring agricultural production is economically viable, and ensuring agricultural production is socially acceptable. The paper also explores government initiatives to support extension and advisory services. Finally, this paper concludes by emphasising that the national policy on extension and advisory services should be amended to suit the five pillars of sustainable agriculture. Keywords: Sustainable agriculture, extension and advisory services, extension, pillars of sustainability, agricultural policy

BackgroundEffective public extension and advisory services have the potential to improve agricultural productivity; net farm income; and food security amongst resource-poor farmers. However, studies conducted to measure the effectiveness of extension and advisory services, offered by the Government of South Africa, have focused on the methods used, instead of the guiding principles, such as demand-driven services; equity; prioritization of farmer’s needs; and social and human capital development. The aim of this research paper was to determine farmers’ perceptions regarding the effectiveness of public extension and advisory services and associated factors. Perceptions of the effectiveness were measured using sixteen variables. A group of 442 farmers, in the Gauteng province, receiving government agricultural extension and advisory services, were randomly selected to participate in the study. Using a semi-structured survey instrument, primary data was collected through physical interviews and then analysed using computer software.ResultsThe study found that public extension and advisory services in Gauteng were perceived as ineffective. Three socio-demographic factors (education level, age and farm/plot size) significantly influenced farmer’s perceptions towards public extension and advisory services. Moreover, the Principle Axis Factoring (PAF) results indicated that there were three underlying factors of the perceived effectiveness of public extension services, namely: relevance and good quality services; provision of information on improving agricultural production; and availability of the technologies required by farmers.ConclusionsLarge-scale farmers perceived public extension services to be less effective. The exploratory factor analysis extracted three underlying factors which accounted for 81.81% of the variance of the perceived effectiveness of public extension services. Farmers recommended that public extension and advisory services should be of good quality; relevant; and should improve agricultural production to be considered as effective by the farmers. Moreover, provision of extension and advisory services should be determined by farm/plot size.

This study investigates the applicability, practicality, and effectiveness of a low-cost AI foundational model (FM) in agricultural extension through the development, fine-tuning, and evaluation of a custom GPT named Utah PeachBot, built using OpenAI’s GPT platform. The research focused on facilitating real-time, evidence-based advisory service support for Extension agents assisting small-scale peach producers in Utah. Methods involved training the GPT with curated, research-based horticultural resources and assessing model outputs through an expert panel of six Extension agents. Results showed high reliability and accuracy for general inquiries about peach cultivation. However, inconsistencies in regional specificity and the practicality of recommendations emerged as limitations. Feedback indicated a need for iterative fine-tuning of the model through continuous expert feedback and integration of local, context-specific data. Recommendations include a phased approach to implementing customized GPTs in agricultural advisory services to improve information dissemination, decision-making quality, and operational efficiency within extension systems.

Agriculture extension and advisory services is a multidisciplinary discipline based on human interaction seeking to improve the livelihoods of farming communities and individuals by providing information and technologies. The training of extension staff is important as it has a bearing on their effectiveness in the office and in the field. This study sought to determine the HRD activities in agricultural extension and advisory services in the public and private sector. The study was done in 5 counties in Kenya and a total of 440 agricultural extension agents were sampled from the public and private extension service. HRD activities focused on formal and in-service training. 68 % of the respondents had attended formal education to improve their education with the majority 63.5 percent, having trained at the diploma level from certificate level while 21.1 % had undergone training at the degree level from diploma level. The main areas of specialization were Agricultural education (34.1 %), General agriculture (28.1 %) and Horticulture (11.7 %). The inclusion of non-agricultural areas of specialization such as Sustainable development and Strategic planning and management show the multidisciplinary nature of agriculture. Inservice courses attended were in the form of short courses, seminars, or workshops. These were clustered in five general areas; Crop Management, Management, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Extension, and Animal Science. Most respondents (40.9 percent) had undergone training in Crop management which covered various crop enterprises from breeding to postharvest management. The shift of agricultural policy toward business orientation is reflected in 13.0 % the respondents specializing in Agricultural Economics. These HRD activities show commitment of agricultural extension providers to improve the competencies of their staff to deliver effective services to farmers. The wide range of formal and in-service courses attended also reflects the need to meet the management and technical requirements of a pluralistic and demand driven extension service.

Climate change and extreme weather shocks pose serious threats to a number of agricultural outcomes, including agricultural production, productivity, and income, especially when households depend heavily on this activity. Agricultural extension and rural advisory services are key instruments in promoting technical change, advancing agricultural productivity growth and, ultimately, improving farm livelihoods, and are expected to mitigate the negative effects of climate change and extreme weather shocks. Their mitigation effects, however, may vary depending on the sex of the recipient. This paper investigates the role of sex-disaggregated agricultural extension recipients in contexts where agricultural performance of farm households is affected by weather variability. To this aim, we match multiple rounds of panel microdata from the nationally representative, consumption-based Living Standards Measurement Study -Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), collected in four sub-Saharan African countries, with remote sensing data on biophysical dimensions over a long-term horizon as well as year-specific weather shocks. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a micro-level dataset with individual-level information on agricultural extension services’ recipients has been assembled and examined to investigate the effects of extreme weather shocks and climate change. Applying panel data econometric estimators, the study finds that agricultural extension and advisory services translate into higher agricultural performance of farm households where women are also among the beneficiaries, as compared to non-beneficiaries and households where beneficiaries are men only. Moreover, these services can mitigate the negative effects of weather variability and climate change, controlling for country and time fixed effects as well as holding all other variables constant. These results call for national and international policies and interventions strengthening rural advisory services, especially targeted to women in settings where household livelihoods are predominantly agriculture-based and weather variability and shocks are expected to negatively affect farming activities.

The U.S. Cooperative Extension System (USCES) faces some serious challenges. Its relevancy and necessity are under continuous scrutiny as the number of farmers and the political power of the agricultural vote diminishes. These challenges provide an excellent opportunity to explore alternative sources of funding for the USCES and methods of technology transfer to farmers. Our objectives were to review the process and results of commercialization (the transition to user-paid consultancy) and privatization (the transition from government to privately owened) of New Zealand's agricultural extension service. Full commercialization of the New Zealand extension service took nearly 9 yr (1986 to 1994) and 3 yr (1992 to 1995) of negotiating before it was sold to a private company. During the commercialization process, the market for paid advisors increased and many of them left the public extension service to become private agricultural consultants. Many farmers were initially unwilling to pay for consultancy services. On the other hand, implementation of advice and adoption of new technologies has been greater among farmers when advice and technology are purchased than when they are provided free. Since the commercialization of publicly funded extension, farmer cooperatives and commodity boards have begun to provide free or low cost services to transfer information to farmers. Educational models and goals, and client-advisor relationships have also changed as a result of user-pays. The commercialization and privatization of publicly funded agricultural extension is a relatively new process and its affect on the long-term sustainability of agriculture within a country are uncertain. Consequently, additional in-depth investigation into the process and its long-term consequences on agricultural productivity, profitability, and social well-being should be completed before initiating such a plan in the USA.

The increasing demand for food with the increasing population in the world and in Türkiye, and the energy demand arising in parallel with this demand have increased the importance of oilseed production. Although vegetable oil consumption has increased in Türkiye in recent years, the production level is insufficient to meet this demand. This study examines the satisfaction levels and expectations of farmers producing sunflower in Edirne province, which has an important place among oilseeds, towards agricultural extension and advisory services. Primary data were obtained from surveys of 165 sunflower producers. The findings reveal that only 35.8% of the producers benefit from professional agricultural advisory services, while the majority of them obtain free information from seed and pesticide dealers. However, 81.2% of the producers stated that they participated in trainings on agricultural activity processes and expressed high satisfaction with the trainings provided by universities and chambers of agriculture. The areas where producers need the most information are disease and pest management, fertilizer use and bureaucratic procedures. The research draws attention to the shortcomings in the accessibility of agricultural extension and advisory services in the region and emphasizes the need to develop a sustainable strategy. Improving and expanding farmer training programs by increasing the capacity of public extension services is critical for adopting modern agricultural practices and maintaining sustainability in sunflower production. The findings of this study are at a level that can provide important contributions to policies to increase the effectiveness of agricultural extension and advisory services in Edirne.

BackgroundAgri-innovations are mostly delivered to farmers through private and public sector-led institutions around the world, with various degrees of success in Malawi. These distribution systems, on the other hand, do not meet everyone's production and productivity needs, particularly those of smallholder farmers. Alternative gap-filling systems are therefore required. Over the course of 7 years, we performed two studies in Malawi to assess the efficiency of integrated farmer led agri-innovation delivery mechanisms, in order to advise programming and delivery improvements. The first study looked at the impact of farmer-led technology delivery on agricultural output and productivity. It was split into two phases: learning (2010–2015) and scaling-out (2016–2019). The second study looked at how smallholder farmers changed their behaviour, after receiving instruction during the scaling-out phase. A farmer-led social network, community seed banks, was used as the research platform.ResultsThe number of farmers who had access to improved seed increased by 35-fold from 2.4% in the baseline year. Groundnut, the major study crop, had a 1.8-fold increase in productivity. In sorghum, and common bean, the difference in grain yield between beneficiaries and control populations was 19% and 30%, respectively. The lowest aflatoxin contamination was found in groundnut grain samples from trained farmers, showing that learning had occurred, with three training sessions sufficient for initiating and sustaining adoption of agri-innovations.ConclusionsMany developing country economies have limited investments in agricultural extension and advisory services, and as well as inefficient agri-input delivery systems, limiting access to science solutions needed to boost productivity. The farmer-led technology and knowledge dissemination systems examined in this research, are appropriate for a variety farming contexts, especially for crops underinvested by private sector, and where public extension and advisory services are poorly funded.

Utilizing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to grant farmers direct access to information, while also developing models tailored to the specific contexts of both public and private agricultural extension sectors, stands as a pivotal endeavor in modern agriculture. This study uses bibliometric analysis to identify key research areas in ICT-based extension and advisory services (EAS) and to understand patterns and trends within this domain. The Scopus database served as the primary tool for accessing publications, yielding a corpus of 525 articles spanning from 1999 onwards, subsequently analyzed through VOSviewer and R software. The findings unveil that the Sustainability journal claims the highest number of published articles, while the Agricultural Economics journal garners the most citations within this realm. Notably, Aker emerges as the most globally cited author with 405 citations, while China Agricultural University emerges as the institution with the highest publication count concerning ICT-based EAS. India emerges as a frontrunner with 446 publications, while publications originating from the USA receive the highest number of citations, reflecting the nation's substantial endeavors and investments in harnessing ICT for agricultural extension purposes. The co-occurrence analysis of all keywords emphasizes the primary focus of publications on e-agriculture and e-extension. Furthermore, the outcomes of co-citation analysis highlight The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension as the most referenced journal, with 22 citations and a cumulative link strength of 266, indicative of its profound influence and recurrent citation alongside other scholarly journals. This study uncovers an escalating interest in this field, emphasizing its paramount importance in contemporary agricultural practices. Accordingly, these findings offer crucial insights for guiding future research and shaping evidence-based policies, thereby aiding researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in improving ICT-based EAS in agriculture.

Chapter 3 - Agricultural extension reforms: lessons from India