Science and Technology Mailing List Archive

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

Reviewing some of the discussion public sector extension and when you really 
need direct contact with farmers and when indirect contact is just as effective.

The first issue is financial and what can a host afford and sustained with 
revenue funds.  If a country can afford direct contact I all in favor.  
However, if the public sector does not have the revenue funds to sustain the 
program, it will stall and a stalled government program is tax burden more than 
a service provider.  A tax burden that requires higher import duties, VATs and 
luxury taxes on tobacco and other goods that drain the taxable income margin of 
in impoverished society in which as much as 80% of income goes for essentials 
and thus very little taxable margin for the government derive the revenues 
needed to provide essential services.  This again places a major drain on 
disposable income and economic opportunities.

At this point it must be noted that our government clients are more than happy 
to support, promote and even insist on programs beyond what is sustainable with 
revenue funds and are not really concerned if the effort stalls.  Thus it is 
left to DFID and other donors to make certain whatever they encourage 
government to do, can be sustained with revenue funds.  Otherwise we are doing 
a big disfavor to our intended beneficiaries and their non-civil servant 
compatriots.  Thus as donors or implementers it is imperative that we seek the 
most cost effective means of distributing information.


The next concern is how much needs to be direct contact and how much can be 
distributed via mass media or printed distribution.

In reviewing this first allow be to consider the smallholder beneficiary.  I 
normal consider smallholders to be intelligent but perhaps with limited 
education.  I tend not to make a major link between intelligence and education 
but consider that education is a combination of intelligence and opportunity.  
Take away the educational opportunity that many smallholder have not had, does 
not distract from their basic intelligence. 

In addition I consider most smallholders to be skilled practitioners of crop 
husbandry with a good understanding of micro economics as it affects their crop 
management.  They learned basic crop husbandry from their parents or other 
mentor and have continually refined that knowledge with time.  Thus 
smallholders have little difficulty in fine tuning what they have learned and 
observed, and have been doing so for generations.  They have also been 
synthesizing information from a variety of sources of which the formal 
extension service has probably contributed the least.

Under these circumstances how much direct contact do you need to relay 
information such standard extension recommendations based on maximum yields, at 
least into a village where most farmers have informal contacts to see or 
observed any relevant innovations?  If these recommendations are basically the 
physical potential of the environment without taking into consideration the 
resource limitation that drag down the physical potential, they can easily be 
convey via mass media and circulars.  The farmers can then find tune this to 
fix their specific needs as they have been doing for generations.

It is the feed back on how appropriate the recommendation where the direct 
contact is needed.  This is what I once referred to as integration.  Which is a 
higher level of diagnostics that looks at both how the technology can be 
adjusted and how the farming system can be adjusted to accommodate the 
innovations.  Sorry more detail than that would be a 10 page attachment and 
thus beyond the scope of the consultation.

This feedback task is to evaluate how the limited resources available to the 
farmer drag down the physical potential the recommendations promote.  This 
looks at the spread of crop establishment over the different parcels the 
constitute a family farm, as well as the village as a whole.  It then looks at 
what supporting technologies need to be promoted that will allow farmers to 
accept recommendations on a larger percent of their holding and a larger 
portion of the village.

Somehow while we can evaluate the resources needed to accomplish a task in a 
specific time period, we have considerable more difficult determining the 
availability of these resources to individual farms and villages, and just 
assume they are available.

For this reason using models to refine recommendations from the physical 
potential to the economic optimal as some recently suggested is an improvement, 
but still assume acceptance is a discretionary economic decision.  When it is a 
discretionary decision an economic optimal recommendation are helpful.  
However, if it is an operational constrain such as limited labor against a 
declining yield potential with each day's delay, then refined recommendation is 
less helpful as the farmers are already reducing the quality of their 
management in order to spread it over a larger area.  This is good production 
economics which only the farmer can make the correct fine tuned adjustment.

Now I have rambled too much for one message.

Dick