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Practical Action's Community-based extension reviews

A summary of the approach was prepared by Hilary Warburton for the international conference:

Innovations in Extension and Advisory service held in Nairobi in November 2011.

The paper is entitled

"Bridging the Gap Between Resource-Poor Farmers and Extension Services: The Role of Community-Based Extension Systems".

Profile of a CBE

A community-based extensionist is a practicing farmer or livestock keeper selected by their community and trained to a standard where they can offer credible advice and services in a specific area of production. A sizeable proportion of those trained 5-10 years ago have built a loyal client base by charging affordable fees for their services, and plan to continue in the role indefinitely. Even the poorest farmers and livestock keepers are benefiting from their services.

Community Based Extension

There is a current trend in policy-making that is putting agriculture (crops, fisheries, livestock) back in the development agenda priorities. If these are to have any impact, sustainable agricultural extension mechanisms and polices need to be brought back onto the agenda as well.

Devolved community level extension services can be self sustaining and stimulate public and private extension services to work more effectively. The extension mechanisms proposed rely on a mix of solidarity, social networks, identity, and market-based elements.

From a policy perspective the key advantage of this system is that when fully operational, it can provide higher level service providers such as a District veterinary officers or reputable input suppliers with a team of field auxiliaries that reach into all corners of a district. The poorest can be reached without the burden of recurring operational costs which has plagued earlier public systems. If national partnerships agreements and standards can be agreed, training of community based extensionists can begin to be funded from public sources, freed from dependence on the vagaries of NGO project funding

Conventional wisdom has it that commercialisation of services fails the poor. The community based extension approach has turned this on its head, as there is no evidence that the service providers are focusing their services on better off farmers over time. On the contrary, the evidence points to the poorer farmers being the preferred market segment for commercialised community based extensionists

The model appears to work whichever lens is applied to it. For proponents of privatisation, the model is a compelling example of micro-level private sector service provision. For proponents of cultural sensitive development in marginalised farming communities, based upon the mobilisation of existing solidarities, the model also very attractive. Above all, however, the approach satisfies the need to invest in a model of extension that can sustain itself over the long term.

The Agricultural Knowledge and Service Gap

The village economy, even in remote areas, has made a transition to the cash economy all over the world. There is a communication revolution which also facilitates linkages between producers and technical service providers. In the remote areas, pastoral communities are becoming more settled. These trends create potential for developing market based agricultural services. Yet millions of small scale farmers and pastoralists do not have access to appropriate services and advice that could improve their productivity. There are two distinct scenarios

In areas of fertile soils and abundant rainfall - population is very high, farm sizes are very small - even through public and private service providers are present their coverage is very limited, and advice/technology/training are not geared towards the majority section of the farming community who work the smallest landholdings. In Bangladesh, for example, it is possible to travel 30 to 45 minutes from a main district town and find that households with 1 acre of land or less have virtually no linkages with external service providers.
Less favoured areas are those where a relatively low level of income is realised due to difficult physical conditions and/or a lack of infrastructure services and support, and where private decision makers would not start to invest under present and expected future conditions. These area tend to be remote and arid, where the population density is low, and infrastructure is extremely poor. The public sector is marked by absenteeism due to low morale and lack of capacity for supervision.

Community Based Extension aims to reach communities that live in both of these environments. Has this potential been realised? With Practical Action, Stuart was involved in a survey of areas where community extensionists were trained 5 to 10 years ago. Evidence is now available from the Peruvian Andes, North Darfur, Samburu District of Kenya and Faridpur District of Bangladesh.