Growth and Poverty Mailing List Archive

["Dick Tinsley" <<address removed>>]

Now that I have gotten my groundrule conditions specified allow me to make a 
couple comments on specific issues.

Extension.

I notice some concern with extension.  Frankly that is the least of my 
concerns.  Again please follow the logic carefully.

Extension is based on knowledge being the limiting factor.  Extension of 
agronomic information is based on small plot results that are very much what 
the potential of the physical environment.  It assumes what I previously 
referred to as the Rockefeller hypothesis is true.  The farmers have the means 
to utilize the information over their entire holding.  It does not take into 
consideration the limited resources available to the farmers such as labor, 
draft power etc. that effectively places a major drag on the physical potential 
and renders the extension information unusable and thus rejected.

In developed countrie the farmers have been able to operate fairly close to 
this physical potential by buying ever larger tractors to accomodate the ever 
larger farms.  This is normally not case for smallholders in the developing 
countries

This again goes back to the time it takes smallholder with only hand tools or 
perhaps draft animals to get their basic land preparation done.  In teaching my 
class I always start the first class with a survey asking the student how long 
it would take for couple limited to hand tools to cultivate 1.5 ha of land.  
The student answers are normally 3 to 4 weeks.  

The smallholder reality is 6 to 8 weeks virtually over all environments I have 
been associated with, including Africa, Asia, and Middle East.  As their is a 
decline in yield potential associated with delayed planting, this places the 
later planting and return for weeding and other mid season activities well 
outside the period when they are effective. This is one reason why most 
extension program have had limited effect.

The real answer is not so much prompting the agronomy but the resource 
enhancement that will provide the farmers the means to get the job done in a 
timely manner.  Hence my continued interest in finding ways to make contract 
mechanization available to stallholders.  Is there any other means of taking a 
8 week planting period and contracting it to a more reasonable 4 weeks that 
would allow the information in most extension programs to be useful to the 
farmers.

Enough for one message.

Dick Tinsley