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Dear GFRAS affiliates,
Many events and activities have happened since our last update. New events and activities on rural advisory services are planned regionally and globally.
Regional Networks
African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services AFAAS
AFAAS invites you to the Agricultural Extension Week 2013 (5-10 August, Gaborone, Botswana). This event is expected to bring together agricultural extension and advisory services practitioners from farmer organisations, research institutions, private sector, civil society organisations, and development partners across and outside Africa. It will build on lessons and innovative Agricultural Advisory Services AAS approaches and tools identified and/or documented since the previous AFAAS symposia 2011 in Ghana.
Agricultural Extension in South Asia AESA
AESA has received funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC to hire a communication officer and hold a face to face meeting of the Southern Asia RAS Network later this year.
Further, the AESA website was upgraded and redesigned with interactive features. Now, readers can comment on blogs and good practices. The AESA Facebook group has reached 350 members and is very active in sharing and discussing information on RAS.
Caribbean Network for Extension
On 28 February to 1 March a regional meeting of extension experts was held at the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Trinidad. Among other topics the participants decided to create a regional RAS network was decided. It will strengthen advisory services in the Caribbean and be affiliated to GFRAS.
European Association of Farm and Rural Advisory Services EUFRAS
In Wroclaw, Poland, a workshop was held in February to promote the formation of European network for rural advisory systems. The foundation of such a network will be presented at the conference “Future of Farm Advisory Services” in Dublin (12-14 June).
Latin America Network for Rural Extension Services RELASER
In January the Chilean Forum for Rural Extension Services was formed. A dozen representatives from the public, private, and academic sector came together to asses the current state of the Chilean extension system and to discuss possible strategies and activities to improve it.
GFRAS Activities
4th GFRAS Annual Meeting
The 4th GFRAS Annual Meeting will take place on 24-26 September in Berlin, Germany, with side events on 22-23 September. The meeting will focus on the topic of“The Role of Private Sector and Producer Organisations in Rural Advisory Services”. The Call for Inputs and registration are open until 21 July (9 June for sponsorship seeking participants).
Pretoria: Policy in Rural Advisory Services
In March three events took place in Pretoria, South Africa: A meeting of the GFRAS Working Group on Policy, a prioritisation of recommendations from the “New Extensionist”, and the FAC Conference “Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa”. As a result, the GFRAS Universities’ Consortium on Extension and Advisory Services was formed. The consortium will act as a platform for sharing and exchanging information and expertise in the training and education sector.
World Wide Extension Study
The Worldwide Extension Study (WWES) provides empirical data on the human and financial resources of agricultural extension and advisory systems worldwide. It was started in 2009 by IFPRI, FAO, and GFRAS, and is now housed on the GFRAS website. Its core is a database with over 350 profiles of extension providers from all over the world that provide extension. Based on these profiles and other sources a number of country profiles have and continue to be elaborated.
You can help enlarge and/or update this database by entering a profile of your own organisation. Find instructions on how to do this on the WWES web page.
Kind regards
Lorenz Schwarz
GFRAS Communication officer
May 2013
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