The Business of Public Sector Extension:

Help Smallholders Make Farming a Business

W.M. RiveraIndependent Consultant

Government in Transition

• Today’s new paradigm is market-driven with an agribusiness orientation that stresses comparative advantage in highly competitive global markets.

• Globalization and its market orientation have placed new pressures on governments and their people to produce more for both domestic consumption and trade.

Extension in Transition

• Institutional and procedural transformations of extension systems have taken place in most sub-regions of Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe.

• These transformations involve advancement toward pluralistic extension systems and the inclusion of farmers as participants in the decision-making processes of these systems.

Pluralism broadly conceived

• Pluralistic extension comprises public, private and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including farmer organizations, as well as agricultural universities, agricultural research and other agricultural development institutions being stimulated by donor investments. That’s a good thing.

Decentralization

• Participation means decentralization – whether in government authority, within administrative services, or of farmers in the decision-making processes.

• This pathway purports to advance democratic principles of participation in decision-making processes. This is also a good thing.

Extension and Farmers as Business People

• Production and access to markets are central to establishing farming as a business. Participation is central to inclusiveness in development.

• But what about extension as a “social technology”? -- promoting innovative social and organizational skills. Farmers as collectives.

• AND…which farmers? [next slide]

Business Opportunities and Extension for the Poor

• Contract farming schemes and producer cooperatives are the two most obviously important avenues to help smallholders to develop farming as a business.

• Public extension and INGO/NGOs can play a significant role in fostering farmer connections to these schemes, especially in helping to develop fledgling businesses and farmer organizations.

The Role for the Public Sector and Public Extension

• Smallholder farmers are generally not served by big industry, and contract farming may involve short-lived arrangements.

• The poor are dependent on the public sector, NGOs and donor organizations. However, public extension’s tendency is to serve more progressive farmers or emerging farmers. A shift is needed for extension to serve smallholders. How?

Overhaul Public Extension

• Public extension needs to enter a new and different transformation. It needs to undergo an overhaul in principle and practice.

• The public sector’s extension arrangements have a special role: to serve smallholders: a technical role, yes, but also a role to enhance social and organizational skills.

Equity in Jeopardy

• According to Roseboom (IFPRI), “An extra dollar earned by a poor farmer is worth more than an extra dollar earned by a rich farmer.

• Even with a premium of a 100% on the benefits of research projects that benefit smallholder farmers, the income redistribution effect is relatively small as well as the economic welfare loss. It reaffirms a popular opinion among economists that agricultural research is not a very effective equity instrument.

Organization for a Balance of Powers

• An imbalance of power is shaping agriculture and affecting the public sector and its extension and rural advisory systems.

• Just as in research we hold “doubt” as our main principle -- questioning statements that purport to be “truth;” hence we must question the power dominance of any one societal sector – whether government, industry or producer organizations.

Conclusions

• The public sector’s public extension and INGOs are key to developing smallholder farms and, insofar as possible, to help smallholders develop farmer-organizations and cooperative businesses.

• This conviction also leads to the conclusion that the real business of the public sector is ultimately to advance and maintain some sort of societal ‘balance of powers.’

Thank you! And an endnote: