Education
Extension is a means of “pro-active informal education” seeking to assists individuals to better understand their situation, and therefore enable them to make
choices and take action in improving their situation
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. The assumption is that an adult education approach action learning both assists people to make better choices,
and leads to better choices being made Coutts et al 1994, p. 5.
Human Development
Extension is a means to “facilitate and simulate individuals and communities” in taking “the initiative in problem definition and seeking solutions to individual and
societal concernsopportunities”. The assumption is that given the opportunity and interactive framework, individuals and communities will and can best improve their
situation. It encourages people to “govern themselves” Coutts et al 1994, pp. 5-6.
2.3 The Recent Debates in Agricultural Extension
espite past successes and reported high economic rates of return to agricultural extension, extension agencies today cannot continue as
“business as usual”. Major pressures driving change in extension programs derive from several aspects. In this part, these aspects will be explained concisely.
2.3.1 Privatization
The role of government in conducting extension is started to be questioned Kidd et al 1999, p. 95.
There are several reasons underpinning this phenomenon. Firstly, public extension services are often criticized being inefficient
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and ineffective; lacking clear objectives, less motivation and low incentives; poorly managed and not
accountable to clients; and lacking relevant technologies Haug 1999, cited in Alex
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The goals of extension include the transferring of knowledge from researchers to farmers, advising farmers in their decision making and educating farmers on how to make better decisions, enabling
farmers to clarify their own goals and possibilities and stimulating desirable agricultural developments van den Ban and Hawkins, 1996, cited in Anderson Feder 2003, p. 1.
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Even where public financing of extension is justified, Anderson Feder 2003: 10 state that private service delivery is often more efficient in serving clientele. This leads to strategies for contracting
extension services linking funding from service delivery, which seek to reduce costs and improve cost- effectiveness of public extension services, but most current reforms go further and attempt to draw on
private sector funding to improve financial sustainability of extension.
D
et al 2002, p. 5
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. Moreover, Alex et al state that, public extension services have low
coverage, less accountable and less involved farmers from influencing extension agendas.
Secondly, since farmers profit from extension advice and the government budgets for public services are decreased, the cost of delivering this advice should
be recovered by charging a fee from the clientele Qamar 2003, p. 24
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. Thirdly, as
the private sector is actively involved in selling farm inputs and machinery, they should also advise farmers on agricultural matters as they are supposed to be more
efficient than the public sector
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. Lastly, healthy competition among service providers will lead to better quality and less cost. There have also supported
the idea that delivery of extension services separately, to be performed by two different sectors,
i.e. public and private Qamar 2003, p. 24.
2.3.2 Decentralization
