Extension services enable farmers to take up innovations, improve production, and protect the environment. Extension shows positive effects on knowledge, adoption, and productivity. With studies showing very high (13–500%) rates of return to extension, it is a cost-effective way to improve farmer productivity and income.

Experiences with extension programmes show the positive impact that they have on productivity and farmer incomes. For instance, a programme with cacao farmers in Peru saw productivity rise from 340 to 600 kg per ha in three years.

Extension services are essential to enable farmers to improve their practices and help them respond to emerging challenges. Knowledge, ideas, and skills gained through extension programmes can help farmers increase their productivity, reduce losses, and gain better access to markets.

The positive impact of extension services is well demonstrated globally. Whether through Farmer Field Schools, marketing training, or by using innovative technologies, knowledge sharing underpins sustainable agricultural practices.

The examples illustrate the importance of participatory processes and farmers’ proactive participation in extension programmes to ensure they meet their needs. The case studies highlight the diversity of issues that can be tackled through extension and advisory services, and the positive impacts these can have on farmers’ livelihoods. In many cases, extension services are an addition to existing structures, such as farmer co-operatives, and are offered as part of a package of services. This helps to ensure that the positive outcomes from extension, such as increased yields, can be translated into positive outcomes for farmers, for example by supporting the marketing of the improved crops.

There are three dimensions to sustainable development: social, economic, and environmental. Knowledge sharing is critical to supporting these dimensions, and extension and advisory services are a vital knowledge-sharing institution. Extension is key for linking scientific research, field-level innovations and innovators, markets, education, and other service providers.

Procedures for Assessing, Transforming, and Evaluating Extension Systems

The purpose of this book is to provide information on how to transform and strengthen pluralistic agricultural extension and advisory systems in moving toward the broader goal of increasing farm income and improving rural livelihoods. The focus of this book is primarily on the technical knowledge, management skills, and information services that small-scale farm households will need to improve their livelihoods in the rapidly changing global economy. In addition, the book will also include information on how extension should help all types of farmers in dealing with escalating natural resource problems, including climate change. The primary focus of this book will be a comparative analysis of different extension strategies, organizational models, institutional innovations, and resource constraints and how an extension system might be transformed and strengthened through specific policy and organizational changes as well as needed investments.

The reform of agricultural extension is on the agenda in many countries and there is a growing convergence among many actors and agencies on key principles that should underpin the process of change. But reform needs to be firmly grounded in a sound analysis of issues relevant to a particular context. This guide provides a framework of such issues as a basis for monitoring, evaluation and analytical discussions to improve support to agricultural extension. It will provide a useful tool for donors, national and local actors involved in planning and organization of extension services seeking to accomplish:

• A strategic dialogue among donors and national and local partners regarding visions for extension and rural development.
• Integration of donor interventions with the broader policy framework and approaches of national partners.
• Optimisation of the allocation of available resources.
• Application of common approaches to analyses so as to permit comparison of experience and joint learning among various actors and agencies.

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) are integral tools for managing and assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of investments in agricultural research and extension (ARE) systems. However, monitoring and evaluation of ARE project performance, outcomes, and impact has been a significant challenge. Moreover, the increased focus of donors and borrowers on impact has resulted in a high demand for expertise in M&E.

The objective of this Good Practice Note is to assist Task Teams of the World Bank and their colleagues in the client countries develop and implement effective M&E systems for ARE projects and programs. The chapters in this Note provide a step-by-step guide for achieving that objective, with emphasis on the World Bank M&E requirements and the specific nature of ARE projects.

Globally, ministries of agriculture, universities, and the private sector employ more than 600,000 extension agents (Swanson, Farmer, and Bahal 1990). In the past, extension services, largely public, were equated with the transfer of agricultural production technology in pre-determined “packages”. Extension systems are now understood to be much broader and more diverse, including public and private sector and civil society institutions that provide a broad range of services (advisory, technology transfer, training, promotional, and information) on a wide variety of subjects (agriculture, marketing, social organization, health and education) needed by rural people to better manage their agricultural systems and livelihoods. This module seeks to summarize principles and good practice for investments in building effective and sustainable extension systems.

Extension reform is in flux, but moving from innovation to execution. Like other historically considered public goods, it is increasingly being decentralized and privatized in different approaches and to different degrees. The immediate challenge facing governments is to reform extension in ways that increase clientoriented services, and at the same time respond to continually changing social goals and economic pressures. Reforms are moving extension in the direction of institutionally pluralistic rural knowledge and innovation networks, but in most cases are not conceived with a clear understanding of the broader implications of such a system.

The compilation highlights the fact that the emerging view of extension is no longer simply that of a unified service, but of a network of knowledge and information support for rural people. One of the propositions put forward throughout the compilation is that extension needs to be viewed within a wider rural development agenda; and that the increasingly complex market, social, and environmental demands on rural production systems requires a more sophisticated and differentiated set of services. From the policy standpoint, this implies that governments need to act in defining and implementing a coherent extension policy for a pluralistic system.

Against a backdrop of changing public policies and other pressures forcing fundamental change in public extension services, the World Bank, USAID, and the Neuchatel Group convened a workshop1 of extension experts to review recent approaches to reform of extension services2 (World Bank 2003). The objective of the workshop was to provide donors, practitioners, and policymakers an opportunity to discuss and identify commonalities in their approaches to agricultural extension. Sessions were organized around issues of institutional pluralism, new funding sources and mechanisms, new extension challenges, and the public sector role in supporting pro-poor extension services.

A Framework for Designing and Analyzing Pluralistic Agricultural Advisory Services

Agricultural advisory services play an important role in supporting the use of the agricultural sector as an engine of pro-poor growth and enabling small farmers to meet new challenges, such as accessing export markets, adopting environmentally sustainable production techniques, and coping with HIV/AIDS and other health challenges that affect agriculture. After years of neglect, there is now renewed interest in agricultural advisory services in many countries. ...