Social Research Reports, Volume 20, June 2011

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Volum ingrijit de Daniela COJOCARU

Title:

Partnership between and among the state and non-state actors in agricultural extension

Authors:

Gana Pati OJHA

Abstract:

This study described the extension process of seven patterns of extension service provision and identified their effectiveness. The specific objectives were 1) to describe the dynamics of extension service provision of three individual extension patterns (IEP) and four interagency partnership extension patterns (IPEP) of government organizations (GOs), nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and private organizations (POs) to farmers in East Chitwan, Nepal in terms of implementing the extension activities; 2) to identify the effective institutional patterns in extending agricultural technologies to farmers in the study areas; and 3) to identify, describe, and explain the factors contributing to the effectiveness of patterns in the provision of extension services in the study areas. This study was conducted for 21 months and used both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Rapid rural appraisals (RRAs) and participatory rural appraisals (PRAs) were used in the beginning of the research to determine the farmer-identified research problems, research sites, technologies, and partner agencies. There was a complete enumeration of 123 farmers who adopted the recommended varieties of hybrid maize or farmer-preferred rice or sunflower and 17 agency personnel who were directly involved in extending the related technologies at the study sites. The researcher collected information through observation, interview schedule, checklist, tape recorder, photography and diary. Descriptive statistics such as proportion, percentage difference, and mean were used to describe the process and effectiveness of the patterns. The Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to determine the relationship between institutional factors and effectiveness. The study showed that GOs and NGOs extended recommended technologies through farmers' groups, whereas POs did so through individual farmers.When these agencies forged a partnership, they worked through their assigned responsibilities and attained a higher level of performance than IEP in terms of target achievement. With respect to effectiveness, IPEP was more effective than IEP. Among the IPEPs, GO+PO and GO+NGO were more effective than the others. The GO+PO was effective in extending high-cost imported technologies to large farmers, whereas the GO+NGO was effective in extending low-cost, locally available technologies to small farmers. This study identified the factors related to effectiveness. Such factors included institutional resources such as the agent’s time committed to the project and availability of extension materials; extension activities which included motivation of farmers, field visits, input availability, farmer training, record keeping, joint meetings of change agents, and farm demonstration; and proximity which included the agent's residence and the partner’s office location. The agencies' fulfillment of their assigned responsibilities and farmers' adoption were strongly related. The partners forged a partnership not only for the benefit of farmers but also for their own. When partners realized that they were not benefiting, they broke the partnership.