last chapters

Assignment:

1) look for/research on the other terms for extension as it is used in other countries; other definitions of extension as used by other countries - to be included in our semi-final exam
2) write a case of farmers/organizations choosing any type of adopters; explain why such farmers/organizations are classified under your chosen category
-submit on tuesday, 9 sept.

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REMAINING CHAPTERS:

THE ADULT LEARNER AND ADULT LEARNING


LEARNING
A relatively permanent change in behavior (in terms of knowledge, values, skill, or attitudes) that as a result of practice and experience.

Who is an Adult?
He or she is a self-directed individual.

Andragogy
It is a student-centered and problem oriented; the art and science of helping adults learn.; based upon the insight that the deepest need of an adult is to be treated as an adult, a self-directing person, to be treated with respect.

Pedagogy is teacher-focused; is the art and science of educating children and is often used as a synonym for teaching.

Characteristics of the Adult Learner
• Free to avoid, engage in, or withdraw from an educational experience
• Regards the hours that he or she gives to learning as precious and expects them to be used to some constructive purpose
• Welcomes and enrolls in adult educational opportunities
• One with a lot of experiences
• Spurns information and ideas that are opposed to his or her cherished beliefs (beliefs are influenced by culture)
• Usually selects his or her own area of educational interest
• Holds an image of himself or herself that the teacher must respect; may desperately want to learn but resent being treated as a pupil
• Authority of teacher for adults who enjoy higher social and economic status than their teacher
• No age gap, and the student’s experience may often exceed that of a teacher
• Likely to display cooperative spirit in contrast to competitiveness of the young; from their own experiences

Motivation to Study
-to participate in an organized learning activity if he or she thinks it will solve personal, social, or vocational problems or make him or happy

Categories of Adults
• Goal-oriented – has one or more specific objectives he or she wants to attain through adult education program
• Learning-oriented – motivated by the desire to know
• Activity-oriented – attracted to adult education programs to meet people to socialize, or to escape from less desirable activities

Reasons or motivation to participate:
• Social relationships, external expectations, social welfare, professional advancement, escape or stimulation, and cognitive interest
• Vocational, personal development, and social relationships
• To become better informed, to prepare a new job, to spend leisure time in an enjoyable and rewarding way, to meet new and interesting people, to increase general knowledge, to escape from routine, to improve personality, and to improve interpersonal relations
• Goals associated by the family situation

Kinds/ Classification of Learning
1. Cognitive – concerns the various aspects of knowing such as perception memory, imagination, judgment, and problem solving
2. Affective – concerned with change in beliefs, attitudes and feeling.
3. Motor – concerned with physical activity


Principles of learning:

1. learning and practice
2. feedback
3. need to learn
4. learners are involved
5. previous experiences
6. environment for learning

Culture and Learning
Every society has its own culture, which is carried by individuals and transmitted through interactions. Culture is totality of knowledge, beliefs, values, and practices of any one society; the product of social, economic, and political organizations of a given society; culture of a society changes at varying paces.

Methods of Influencing Human Behavior
• Compulsion or Coercion – power is exerted by an authority, forcing somebody to do something
• Exchange – goods or services are exchanged between two individuals or groups.
• Advice – it is given on which solution to choose for a certain problem.
• Openly Influencing a Farmer’s Knowledge and Attitudes
• Manipulation
• Providing Means
• Providing Service
• Changing the Socio-economic Structure

Knowledge and Learning

Principles
• Must take into account the learner’s culture
- the universe as the learner defines it: beliefs, values, standard of acceptable and non- acceptable practices, understanding of way things work
• Motivating force of needs

Strategies to Influence Farmers’ Behavior

1. Development & influence strategy -
‘Doing to’ or working to get the farmer in a situation considered desirable by the extension
agent or organization
2. Social marketing strategy -
‘Doing for’ or working for farmers’ interests
3. Problem-solving strategy -
‘Doing with’ or working jointly with farmers to solve their problems

Considerations in the choice of a strategy
o the problem area
o trust in farmers’ capabilities
o task of extension organization
Extension is an educational process for bringing about the maximum number of desirable changes among the people, which involves both learning & teaching & needs some tools or methods commonly known as extension-teaching methods. It is, therefore, necessary here to understand what is meant by learning, teaching & extension methods.
'Learning' is the process by which an individual, through his own activity, attains a change in his behaviour. It is an active process on the part of the learner. The essential role of an extension worker is to create effective 'learning situations'. An effective learning situation requires the following essential elements:
1. An instructor (an extension worker, e.g. an extension officer or a village-level worker).
2. Learners (the farmers, the farm women & the youth).
3. Subject-matter (the recommended improved practices, such as the seeds of high-yielding varieties, fertilisers, balanced diet, etc.)
4. Teaching material, such as a flannel-board, a black-board, charts, models, samples, slides, film strips, etc.
5. Physical facilities, such as sitting accomodation, good visibility, etc.
The extension worker should skillfully manipulate the elements of the learning situation & provide satisfactory learning experiences for the people. The farmer, the farmer women or the farm youth are the focal points in the learning situation. The main aim of an extension worker is to bring about a change in this behaviour of the people with the help of a judicious combination & use of different elements. all the teaching should be carried out according to the needs & resources of the local community or group.
'Teaching' is the process of arranging situations in which the things to be learnt are brought to the notice of the learners, their interest is developed & desire aroused, i.e. they are stimulated to action.
for example, if we want to teach the farmers the use & advantages of chemical fertilisers, we do this by conducting demonstrations on their fields, showing them how the fertilisers are applied, & compare the yield of the fertilised crop with that of the crop to which no fertilisers has ben applied. After seeing the beneficial effect of a fertilisers, the farmer is convinced & motivated to action & starts using fertilisers regularly.

Conventional methodologies for learning
Agricultural institutions of all types have long relied on questionnaire surveys and quick rural visits to gather information on rural people and resources. Samples of people selected from a larger population are asked the same set of questions, and so it is assumed that the interviewers do not influence the process. Many informants are selected to account for all variation, and the resulting data are statistically analysed. Such surveys are used at practically all levels, from the large-scale census to small-scale, village-level research; by governments and NGOs; and for planning, research, and extension.
But there are problems with questionnaire surveys. The questionnaire designer has to determine the questions well in advance. Yet those who design these instruments cannot know which issues are important for local people. So they tend to increase the number of questions to ensure that all relevant issues are covered. This leads, in some cases, to forms of absurd length, with several hundred questions taking hours to administer. Rarely is attention paid to the nature of the interviewing process. In the structured survey, many of the contextual grounds for understanding are systematically removed or ignored, and all too often, the ill-trained enumerator further influences the process by prompting with answers. Despite many criticisms of this methodology (Chambers, 1983, 1992c; Fowler & Mangione, 1990; Rhoades, 1990; Gill, 1993), official surveys, such as sample censuses of agriculture or household expenditure surveys, remain remarkably popular.
At the other end of the spectrum are the brief field visits made by development professionals. But such "rural development tourism" is full of biases that misguide professionals into believing they have seen an accurate picture of rural life. Chambers (1983) characterized these biases into four main types: spatial biases, in which the better-off people living near roads and services are visited, with those who are remote and thus poorer being missed; time biases, in which visits are made during the seasons when roads are open and at times of day when people are busy in the fields; people biases, in which professionals speak only to rural leaders and articulate people who represent only the elite, dominant, and wealthy groups; and project biases, in which a showcase village or technology is repeatedly shown to outsiders, who get the impression that this is typical of all efforts.
What all this implies is that institutions come to believe that this selective information represents a comprehensive picture. Professionals are left with falsely favourable impressions of the impact of their work, and so they themselves have few reasons for initiating or encouraging change. Because of these flaws in conventional methods, development practitioners began in recent years to seek alternatives that avoided some of these problems.

Alternative systems of learning and action
Partly because of these flaws in conventional approaches, there has been a recent rapid expansion in participatory methods and approaches. These began with the development of data-gathering methods which came to be known as rapid rural appraisal. During the late 1980s, this growing experience was supplemented by drawing upon long-established traditions that had put participation, action research, and adult education at the forefront of attempts to emancipate people. To the wider body of development programmes, these approaches represent a significant departure from standard practice. Some of the changes under way are remarkable. In a growing number of government and nongovernment institutions, extractive research is being superseded by investigation and analysis by local people themselves. Methods are being used not just for local people to inform outsiders, but also for people's own analysis of their own conditions (Chambers, 1992b, 1992c; Pretty & Chambers, 1993; Pretty, 1995).
The interactive involvement of many people in differing institutional contexts has promoted innovation and ownership, with many variations in the way that systems of learning have been put together. There are many different terms (Box 1), but they have the following important common principles (Pretty, 1994):
• A defined methodology and systemic learning process. The focus is on cumulative learning by all the participants and, given the nature of these approaches as systems of learning and interaction, their use has to be participative.
• Multiple perspectives. A central objective is to seek diversity, rather than to characterize complexity in terms of average values. The assumption is that different individuals and groups make different evaluations of situations, which lead to different actions. All views of activity or purpose are heavy with interpretation, bias, and prejudice, and this implies that there are multiple possible descriptions of any real-world activity.
• Group learning processes. All involve the recognition that the complexity of the world will only be revealed through group inquiry and interaction. This implies three possible mixes of investigators, namely, those from different disciplines, from different sectors, and from outsiders (professionals) and insiders (local people).
• Context specific. The approaches are flexible enough to be adapted to suit each new set of conditions and actors, and so there are multiple variants.
• Facilitating experts and stakeholders. The methodology is concerned with the transformation of existing activities to try to bring about changes which people in the situation regard as improvements. The role of the "expert" is best thought of as helping people in their situation carry out their own study and so achieve something. These facilitating experts may be stakeholders themselves.
• Leading to sustained action. The learning process leads to debate about change, and debate changes the perceptions of the actors and their readiness to contemplate action. Action is agreed upon, and implementable changes will therefore represent an accommodation among the different conflicting views. The debate or analysis both defines changes which would bring about improvement and seeks to motivate people to take action to implement the defined changes. This action includes local institution building or strengthening, thus increasing the capacity of people to initiate action on their own.
These alternative systems of learning and action imply a process of learning leading to action. A more sustainable agriculture, with all its uncertainties and complexities, cannot be envisaged without all actors being involved in continuing processes of learning.


UNIT 7
EXTENSION APPROACH

- the style of action within the extension system which embodies the philosophy of that system
• sets the pace for all the activities of the system
• works like a doctrine for the system- informs, stimulates and guides the system
-an organized and coherent mix of the various methods and strategies whatever is applicable
for an extension work in the rural areas to become effective (strategies are approaches
and methods developed to reach a goal)


APPROACHES (FAO, 1988)
1. The General Agricultural Approach
2. The Commodity Approach
3. The Agricultural Extension Participatory Approach
4. The Project Approach
5. The Farming Systems Development Approach
6. The Cost Sharing Approach
7. The Educational Institution Approach
General Agricultural Extension Approach
• General Nature: transfer of technology
• Basic Assumption: technology and information are available but are not being used by farmers. If these could be communicated to farmers, farm practices would be improved
• Purpose: to help farmers increase their production.
• Program Planning: controlled by government and changes in priority, from time to time, are made on a national basis, with some freedom for local adaptation.
• Implementation: carried out by a large field staff assigned throughout the country. Demonstration plot are a major technique.
• Resources Required: large number of field personnel.
• Measure of Success: increase in national production of the commodities being emphasized in the national program
• Advantages: interprets national government policies and procedures to local people; relatively easy to control by the national government; relatively rapid communication from the ministry level to rural people.
• Disadvantages: lacks two-way flow of communication; falls to adjust extension messages to different localities; field staff not accountable to rural people; expensive inefficient

Commodities Specialized Approach
• General Nature: highly specialized; focuses on one export crop or one aspect for farming.
• Basic Assumption: the way to increase productivity and production of a particular commodity is to really to concentrate on that one; grouping extension with such other functions as research, input supply, output marketing, credit, and sometimes price control, will make the whole system productive.
• Purpose: to increase production of particular commodity; sometimes it is to increase utilization of a particular agricultural input.
• Program Planning: controlled by the commodity organization.
• Implementation: carried out by a large field staff assigned throughout the country; demonstration plots are a major technique.
• Resources Required: provided by the commodity organization.
• Measure of Success: total productivity of a particular crop.
• Advantages: technology tends to “fit” the production problems and so messages of extension officers sent to growers tend to be appropriate; because of coordination with research and marketing people, messages tend to be delivered in a timely manner to producers; focus on a narrow range of technical concerns; higher salary incentives; closer management and supervision; fewer farmers per extension worker; easier to monitor and evaluate; relatively more cost- effective.
• Disadvantages: interests of farmers may have less priority than those of the commodity organization; does not provide advisory service to other aspects of farming; problems of the commodity organization; promoting “its commodity” even in situations where it is no longer in the national interest to increasing production of that commodity.

Agricultural Extension Participatory Approach
• General Nature: concerned with a broad range of agricultural subject, shifting its local focus from time to time as village problems change or change or as needs arise.
• Basic Assumption: farming people have much wisdom regarding production of food
from their land to their levels of living and productivity could be improved by learning
more from what is outside; that there is an IKS, different from the scientific knowledge
system, but there is much to be gained from the interaction of the two; participation
of the farmers, as well as research and related services; that there is a reinforcing effect
in group learning and group action; that extension efficiency is gained by focusing on
important points based on expressed needs of farmers.
• Purpose: to increase production of farming people; increase consumption and enhance the quality of life of rural people.
• Program Planning: controlled locally, often by farmers’ associations.
• Implementation: features many meetings and discussions of farmers’ problems and exploring situations with extension officers.
• Resources Required: extension workers who are not technically trained but are also not formal educators, animators, and catalysts.

Project Approach
• Basic Assumption: better results can be achieved in a particular location, during a specified time period, with large infusions of outside resources; high impact activities, carried on under artificial circumstances; will have some continuity after outside financial support is no longer available.
• Purpose: to demonstrate, within the project area, what can be accomplished on a relatively short period of time; to test the variety of alternative extension methods.
• Program Planning: control by outside the village, with central government, the “donor” agency or some combination.
• Implementation: includes a project management staff, project allowance for field staff, better transportation, facilities, equipment, and better housing than regular government program.
• Advantages: focused, enables evaluation of effectiveness, and sometimes “quick results” for foreign donor; novel techniques & methods can be treated & experimented within the limits of the projects.
• Disadvantages: usually too short time period; money provided tends to be more than what is appropriate; flow of “ good ideas” in the project to the areas outside the project; double standards; when money ends, production extension programs most after ends also.


Farming System Development Approach
• Basic Assumption- technology, which fits the needs of farmers particularly small farmers, is not available and needs to generated locally.
• Purpose: to provide extension persons, and through their farm people, with research results tailored to meet the needs and interest of the local farming system conditions.
• Program Planning: evolve slowly during the process, and may be different for each ages, climatic farm eco-system type since the program must take into account a holistic approach to the plants, animals, and people in ache particular location; control of program shared jointly by local men and women, agricultural extension officer, and agricultural researchers.
• Implementation: through partnership of research and extension personnel and with local people, taking a systems approach to the farm; sometimes involves scientific disciplines, however, requires that research personnel go to the farm, listen to farmers, and in collaboration with them, and the extension personnel, understand the from as a system.
• Measure of Success: extend to which farm people adopt the technologies developed in the program and continue to use them overtime.
• Advantages: some measure of local control of program planning increases relevance of program content and methods to needs and interests of clientele; higher adoption rates; effective communication between local people and extension personnel; low cost to central government and local people.

Cost Sharing Approach
• Basic assumption: any NFE program is more likely to achieve its goals if those who benefit from it share some part of the cost; program would be more likely fit to local situation; personal would be more likely serve interest of client if cost are shared between “outside” sponsors and “inside” target group; commitment of learners to participate if they pay some part of the cost.
• Purpose: to help farm people learn those things they need to know for self-improvement and increased productivity; to funding of agricultural extension affordable and sustainable both at central and local levels.
• Program Planning: shared by various levels paying the cost but must be responsive to local interest in order to maintain “cooperative” financial arrangements; local people tend to have strong voice in program planning.
• Measure of Success: farm people’s willingness and ability to provide some share of the cost, individually or through their local government units
• Advantages: some measure of local control of program planning increases relevance of program content and methods to needs and interest of clientele; higher adoption rates; effective communication between local people and extension personnel; lower cost to central government and local people.
• Disadvantages: more difficult for central government to control either program or personnel

Training and Visit Approach
• General Nature: highly disciplined and patterned; with fixed schedule for training of village extension workers, SMS, and scheduled visits by extension workers to farmers.
• Basic Assumption: extension personnel are poorly trained; not up-to-date and tend not to visit farmers, but stay in their offices; management and supervision is not adequate; two-way communication between research and extension units and between extension staff and farmers can be achieved through this discipline.
• Purpose: to include farmers to increase production of specified crops decided upon professionals and program is delivered “down” to farmers; program planning follows cropping pattern of priority crops.
• Implementation: relies basically on visits by extension workers to small groups of farmers or to individual “contact” farmers; fortnightly training and dependent on central resources; more adequate transportation capability for field personnel.
• Measure of Success: increase in yield, and total production of the crops being emphasized.
• Advantages: pressure on governments to recognize a large number of small agricultural extension units into one integrated service brings discipline to the system, VEWs become more up-to-date with information; closer technical supervision.
• Disadvantages: high long-term costs to governments due to expanding size of VEWs; lack of actual two-way communication; technology that is relevant to the farmers is not integrated; lack of flexibility to change programs as needs and interests of farmers change; field staff tires to vigorous, patterned activities without appropriate rewards.


Or Consider the following Re-classification of Approaches:


APPROACHES IN EXTENSION

An extension approach is an organized and coherent combination of strategies and methods, designed to make rural extension effective in a certain area.
Strategies are approaches and methods chosen or developed to reach a particular set of goal; used to define the operational design by means of which a national government, or other sponsoring organizations, implements its policies.

Mass Approach
The Farming System Development Approach
 Assumes that technology which fits the needs of farmers, particularly small farmers, is not available and needs to be generated locally
 Aims to provide extension personnel (and through them farm people), with research results tailored to meet the needs and interests of local farming system conditions.
 the control of the program is shared jointly by local farm people, extension officers and researchers
 In each particular location, the program actually ‘fits’ the needs and interests of its clientele and they are more likely to participate over time, adopt recommended practices and support continuity of the total agricultural extension program.
 Implementation is thru a partnership between research and extension personnel
 The cost can be quite high
 The approach brings results slowly
 Reporting and administrative control is difficult

Commodity Approach
 An organized and coherent combination of extension strategies and methods, which facilitate the production of one specific crop (commodity).
 Extension content is limited to technical and administrative or commercial aspects of the production of a commodity
 Concentrates on one cash crop and provides all elements of the mix necessary for growing it, including marketing and price controls
 Each individual farmers has direct contact with the board/society
 Technology tends to fit the production problems and the messages which extension officers send growers tend to be appropriate
 Extension activities tend to be coordinated; messages delivered is timely; focus on a narrow range of technical concerns; easier to monitor and evaluate; more cost effective
 Interest of farmers may have less priority over those of the production organization
 Does not provide advisory service to other aspects of farming if farmers like to produce more than one commodity
 It may contradict with national production program

Area Approach
Scheme Approach
 An organized and coherent combination of extension strategies and methods, which aims at the reinforcement of the rules and regulations of a scheme.
 The management control most of the production factors
 Decisions about innovation are production factors
 Decisions about innovation re all taken by one management
 Allow results in a short time and can be expanded to include large numbers of people
 Success depends on the quality of management
 Often used not for rural welfare but for extraction of wealth out of rural areas
 Capital costs per unit area or household are always high and schemes are always administration – and management intensive
 Unless it is designed and controlled very much according to rules which fit the farmer’s needs, and unless the scheme yields results which farmers perceive as beneficial, scheme approach hardly works

Team Approach
The Target Category Approach
 An extension approach which provides carefully selected information, and other support for the specific needs of deliberately chosen categories in the population
 Target categories are formed on the basis of similarities of their needs and /or opportunities
 Selected delivery of opportunities is successful to the extent that benefit only members of target categories

The Functional Group Approach
 Is an extension approach where one of the prime targets is to form groups of persons who join their efforts in order to mobilize the necessary resources to be able to achieve as shared goal.
 The change in behavior of participants is carried out by five different elements: mobilization; organization; training; technical and resource support; and special efforts to consolidate and replicate the results.
 Installing new opportunities for the rural; requires understanding of their own situation; its potential for change; and their own possible role in it
 Making use of opportunities usually requires that the rural poor decide on some form of organization to allow collective decision making, collective responsibility, resource pooling and other collaborative arrangements, as well as a participative structure and a single voice in dealing with outside forces
 Developing and utilizing opportunities usually requires new local, technical and organizational roles
 Developing and utilizing opportunities and local projects requires technical and local resource support if tangible results are to materialize
 Crucial role in the system includes starting up functional groups and agency support, maintaining the linkages between them, mobilizing, organizing and training new functional groups, initiating local development projects; providing starter loans, lobbying for support from agencies, so forth

The Farmers Organization Approach
 Independent, self-management and in most cases permanent organizations are formed with the objective to propagate some kind of social or economic development for the embers.
 Requires a relatively high degree of mobilization of the farmers as well as the capacity to manage their own affairs on a communal basis
 Requires government policy that facilitates or tolerates the emergence of a farmers’ lobby and is willing to look upon the organizations as partners in development.

Individual Approach
The Project Approach
 Assumes that the large government bureaucracy is not likely to have a significant impact upon either agricultural production or rural people, and that better results can be achieved in a particular location, during a specified time period with large infusions of outside resources.
 Assumes that high impact activities, carried under artificial circumstances, will have continuity after outside financial support diminishes
 Aims to demonstrate, within the project area, what can be accomplished in a relatively short period of time
 Measure of success is usually short run change at the project site
 Time period is usually too short and amount of money provided tends to more than adequate
 Flow of ‘good ideas’ from the project area to other places
 Tendency that when money ends, so does the project

Integrated Approach
General Agricultural Approach
 Dominant approach for the last 80 years
 It assumes that technology and information are available and not being used by farmers; if communicated to farmers, farm practices would be improved
 Its purpose is to help farmers increase their production
 Success is measured by the increases in national production of the commodities being emphasized in the national program
 Provides for relatively rapid communication for the department level to rural people
 Typically lacks two-way of information; communication about farmers problem, needs and interest tend not to follow-up through the extension channel used
 Reflecting national goals and targets fails to adjust the messages for each different locality
 Field staff are not accountable to the rural people of the area in which they are working
 Expensive and inefficient

The Technical Change Approach
 An extension approach which aims at the maximum adoption of a number of innovations
 Most common approach followed in agricultural development
 Technical information is diffused indiscriminately (but not necessarily unstrategically) within the rural society
 Farmers are free whether or not to receive the information and to try, adopt or reject the innovation
 Innovations are introduced to a small number of “selected farmers” in the hope that autonomous diffusion processes will multiply the impact of the intervention
 Technology development is left to research institutions which may not take into account farming systems and farmers ‘ production objectives
 Utilization of technology is hindered because information, goods and services are not offered in the mix necessary from the producers’ point of view
 Problem on the heterogeneity of rural populations in terms access to resources and their farming systems.
 Extension has only direct contact with minority of the farmers
 Seems usually unsuitable for poverty alleviation

Training and Visit Approach
 Spread rapidly since mid 70s
 Assumes that extension field personnel are poorly trained, not up-to-date and tend not to visit farms
 There is a fix schedule of training of village extension workers and farmers
 Decisions of what to be taught, when it be taught tend to be made by the professionals and the program is delivered down to the farmers
 Implementation relies basically on visits by village level extension workers to small groups of farmers or to individual contact farmers
 Funds come from large international loans
 Teaches farmers how to make the best of available resources
 Brings discipline and devotion to their work for the extension officers
 High long-term costs to government in expanding size of field extension staff
 Lack of two-way communication between research and extension staff
 Lack of flexibility to change program as needs and interest of farming people change

Participatory Models and Approaches
The Agricultural Extension Participatory Approach
 Includes participation by personnel of agricultural research and service organizations, as well as farmers
 Concerned with broad range of agricultural subjects, shifting local focus as village problems change or as new needs arise
 Assumes that farming people have much wisdom regarding production of food from their land, but levels of living and productivity could be improved by learning
 Aims to increase production of farming people and increase the consumption and enhance quality of knife of rural people
 Participation in program [planning increases exposure to different sources of information; awareness of new information and practices; confidence on new practices and in oneself; initiative and adoption rate and productivity.
 Extension workers not only agricultural educator, but also animators and catalysts to stimulate farmers to organize group effort
 Success is measured on the continuity of local extension organizations, benefits to the community, extent to which agricultural research personnel and others actually participate in both planning and implementation
 Cost less because local associations facilitate communication making whole system more efficient
 Caters to both human and technical side of extension
 Lacks central control of program which may lead to competition and confusion
 Difficult to manage central reporting and accounting since program shift as local conditions change
 The issue whether participation of local people actually influences management decisions

Rapid Community Appraisal (RCA)
 Data collection technique that can be used both for rural and urban situations with multi-perspective analysis
 Short adoption conducted by multidisciplinary team interacting with the community, obtain usually non-empirical data to guide further study and plan intervention programs to other possible courses of action
 Rapid and effective way of obtaining behavioral, economic and sociological in formation bout a particular topic or situation; able to deal with complex systems and can provide insight into situations from multiple perspectives
 So versatile and inventive, open to superficial and producing error in the data, not suitable in collecting precise or statistically significant information
 Generates large amount of data which needs comprehensive and thorough analysis and synthesis
In this chapter, extension approaches are presented in terms of their most important organizational forms and their respective goals. The goal system reflects the power positions of various groups of actors. Therefore, without an understanding of the historical development and of the interest groups involved, present achievements and shortcomings of extension approaches cannot be evaluated. It is assumed that different forms of organizing extension are per se neither "good" nor "bad." Rather, extension services must be judged against their proper goals. The one universal yardstick, however, is their service function to the rural communities. Extension which is not in touch with and does not significantly contribute to improving the life situation of its clientele has lost its legitimization.
 Alternative ways of organizing extension
The goals of extension may vary, as was shown, within the overall system as well as between different extension organizations. In addition, specific objectives may sometimes contradict each other. While smaller systems may come close to pursuing a consistent set of objectives or reconciling conflicting interests, large-scale organizations must work on a compromise basis. In this respect, Axinn's principal observation is of particular importance: "The success of an agricultural extension programme tends to be directly related to the extent to which its approach fits the programme goals for which it was established" (Axinn, 1988, p. 135).
The alternatives to organizing extension demand choices on various levels:
• Public versus private
• Government versus nongovernment
• Top-down (bureaucratic) versus bottom-up (participatory)
• Profit versus nonprofit
• Free versus cost-recovery
• General versus sector
• Multipurpose versus single purpose
• Technology driven versus need oriented
In practice, extension organizations everywhere pursue the overall goals of technology transfer and human resource development, though the emphasis will differ. Within each organization there is a mix of objectives, and within countries there is often a mix of organizational patterns. When presenting an overview on the most important patterns, we will be using a well-established terminology (Axinn, 1988; UNDP, 1991), though the grouping is different. We will differentiate between approaches that, at least in principle, target all persons in rural areas engaged in farming and those that purposely select clientele according to specific criteria.
General Clientele Approaches
Ministry-Based General Extension. Shortly before or after independence, organizing agricultural extension work under the wings of the ministry of agriculture seemed to be an ideal solution for many African and Asian governments. All options for reaching large numbers of clients and serving their needs in terms of quality information and assistance appeared to be open. The original colonial model combined research and extension within the same organization. All important aspects of small-holder agriculture - plant production, animal husbandry, home economics - could be attended to as the ministry established respective sections under its jurisdiction. The fact that the ministerial hierarchy followed the country's territorial subdivision allowed the systematic expansion of the system "down" to the village. The generalist nature of field extension staff functions corresponded to the set of problems faced by noncommercial growers. To cater to specific needs - in terms of technology or in terms of target groups - specialists could be employed. Thus clientele included in principle all persons engaged in agriculture. Commercial service and support organizations lacking, village-level extension staff could be expected to supplement information by rendering services necessary to apply it productively. A uniform and nationwide organizational pattern seemed to facilitate information flow - including the infusion of expatriate expertise - and corrective measures whenever weaknesses were identified. Public interest was to guide goal setting, programme formulation, and the implementation of fieldwork.
A review of the last thirty years of extension work in Africa and Asia shows that reality is quite far for failure are complex and manifold and cannot be removed from this vision (Moris, 1991). The reasons for failure are complex and manifold and cannot be reduced simply to incompetence or the ill-will of national governments.
One reason is the contradictory nature of goals. Public interest implies serving farmers and the urban population, securing subsistence production and promoting cash crops for export, reaching the masses of rural households and serving the needs of specific groups, extending assistance to high-potential and disadvantaged producers. In short, priorities will have to be set, and these are all too often pro urban in terms of price policy, favouring innovative individuals within the modem sector, neglecting poorer strata, and forgetting about women farmers.
In many ways, the hierarchical and highly bureaucratic way in which the services are organized hampers a full realization of their potential. Priority setting for research is rarely based on extension field evaluations because the system does not foster critical upward communication.
The way in which technical (and other) knowledge is transformed into field messages frequently leads to distorted and outdated information.
In the eyes of the ministry, extension has never been a purely educational activity. This is a legitimate view as long as the different functions to be performed by extension personnel are compatible and basically client oriented (such as helping to organize input supply). Noneducational activities may include anything from statistical data collection to attending to foreign visitors. Incompatible with and clearly detrimental to regular extension work are such activities as supervising credit repayment, policing disease control measures, organizing "voluntary" community work, and electioneering.
Ministry-based extension has been unable to reach a majority of its potential clientele for economic, sociopsychological, and technical reasons. Even dramatic quantitative increases in personnel - more staff closer to the farmer - have not produced manageable client-to-agent ratios. In recent years, the trend has even been negative. Financial constraints have produced a strong pressure to reduce staff, and the field level has been hit hardest. Those remaining have little if any material resources left to maintain mobility.
In addition, many extension workers select the more responsive section of their clientele. They may have to fulfil production plans, they may want to improve job satisfaction or status, or they may simply be prejudiced against certain target groups. Lastly, extension often has little to offer in terms of messages to large sections of the rural population. Adequate and location-specific answers to a farmer's problem are often not available because it has not been a research concern or the solution has simply not reached the field.
Today's situation is aggravated by two additional aspects which refer to the internal structure of the service: management problems and lack of control from below. Ministry extension employs thousands of persons working under a wide variety of circumstances. Decision making and management are highly centralized and formalized. Extension fieldwork, on the other hand, demands location-specific, flexible, and often quick decisions and actions. Managing the "invisible" man or woman (Chambers, 1974) must be highly ineffective as long as he or she is expected to receive and execute orders.
All these problems are well known, and criticism has come both from within and outside the ministry. What has been lacking is organized feedback from clientele. Farmers may show their discontent by refusing to cooperate with extension, but they have virtually no way of influencing institutional reforms.
Training and Visit Extension (T&V). In the strict sense of the word, T&V is not a separate approach but one way to organize ministry-based extension. The controversial debate on the merits of T&V tends to obscure the fact that it was originally meant to solve some very specific problems of conventional extension services.
Benor and Harrison's original paper - one of the most influential extension publications ever - critically evaluates the ministry-based extension system of the 1970s (Benor & Harrison, 1977, p. 6-9). They found:
• An inadequate internal organizational structure
• Inefficiency of extension personnel
• Inappropriateness or irrelevance of extension content
• Dilution of extension impact
Whichever impact is reached serves "only a few favored farmers in favored areas rather than the bulk of the farming community" (p. 9).
When first being introduced, T&V seemed to be strikingly original and promising because it combined a set of rather convincing simple elements in a plausible way. Rather than trying to reach all farmers directly and thus preprogramming constant failure, the system concentrates on contact farmers expected to pass information on to fellow farmers with similar problems. To ensure regular field contacts, facilitate supervision and communication, and set clear and attainable objectives, fixed visits at regular intervals are prescribed. Similarly, regular sessions for extension workers to receive training and discuss administrative matters are held. Thus costly refresher courses are avoided, knowledge may be enhanced step-by-step, and up-to-date information can be fed into the system.
In addition, T&V operates under the assumption that its extension workers are exclusively engaged in educational activities and that a unified extension service exists. Agricultural research must not only be effective but also work in close collaboration with extension. Both external and internal evaluations are to be used to constantly modify and adapt the system to changing conditions.
Simple as the prescriptions seemed, implementation proved to be difficult. First, the contact farmer concept - implying a two-step flow of information from the extension worker to the contact, farmer and from there to other farmers - has frequently failed. Extension workers have been blamed for "wrong selection," but the root of the problem lies within the purely technical philosophy of T&V. Other aspects such as communication skills, leadership, and organizational capacities are neglected. In practice, T&V has been a top-down approach leaving little possibility for participation and initiative, both for farmers and village extension workers. Too little emphasis has been put on critical feedback based on self-evaluation. As a result, rigidity rather than flexibility characterizes local fieldwork.
Secondly, Benor's fear that extension services may "rapidly run out of anything to extend" (Benor & Harrison, 1977, p. 8) characterizes many T&V field situations. The standardized messages passed on are often of little relevance to local conditions. Once T&V was extended to less favoured regions, it soon became clear that technology of the green revolution type showing quick and visible results is not available. Still, training sessions were held and visits made according to schedule, leaving behind disinterested farmers and demotivated extension workers.
The limited success of T&V in its present form as a nationwide extension system should not discredit the quality and appropriateness of many of its elements. Applied less rigidly and combined with the tools of human resource development as well as with the concept of participation, these elements may constitute a valuable base for reforming extension organizations, large or small (Nagel et al., 1992).
The Integrated (Project) Approach. Integrated approaches aim at influencing the entire rural development process. Extension is only one though often crucial element in this strategy which targets the entire population in a given area but emphasizes work with disadvantaged groups. Integrated approaches are generally implemented in the form of large-scale and foreign-funded projects aiming at alleviating mass poverty in rural areas on the basis of "a simultaneous improvement in the utilization of natural resources and of human potential" (Rauch, 1993, p. 6). Measures to promote production are coupled with a strong emphasis on self-help. The underlying concept is typically multisectoral.
Evaluations of more than a decade of integrated rural development (IRD) projects have revealed serious shortcomings in reaching the goal of mass poverty alleviation (IBRD, 1987; BMZ, 1990). Sizeable numbers of the poor were not reached by project activities, nor were positive effects consolidated on a sustainable basis. Project deficiencies were in part management related and very often due to a serious underestimation of the great complexity of multisectoral programmes with ambitious goals. The disregard of the target group principle and of due consideration for framework conditions (economic and institutional) played an even more important role, as did the lack of compatible technical solutions.
Recent efforts to improve regional rural development (RRD) projects and enhance chances for a broad and sustainable impact (Rauch, 1993) are relevant for all general extension approaches. The key concept is the availability of locally adapted solutions established on a common basis. This requires not only participatory technology identification, test, and dissemination, but also an active role by the change agency in mediating between different institutions involved and their interests. A particular emphasis is laid on dealing with adverse framework conditions, explicitly taking them into account and attempting to influence them in favour of clients. Finally, in order to achieve these improvements, new efforts must be made to specify and operationalize (extension) objectives and concepts (sustainability, participation, gender-specific target-group approach, and poverty alleviation).
University-Based Extension. While the Cooperative Extension Service (CES) of the United States is still the only system in which the main extension function remains within the university, some developing countries, notably India, have integrated educational institutions into practical extension work. Within the United States of America, state universities have traditionally cooperated with local counties and the U.S. Department of Agriculture in doing extension besides education and research. Within the last 130 years, extension goals of the land-grant colleges have shifted from practical education to technology transfer and, more recently, to a much broader concept of human resource development.
With the emergence of strong private and other public sector research and development organizations and dramatic changes within the agricultural production sector, CES is facing new challenges with regard to coordination and cooperation. Apart from its traditional roles, networking will become a primary role (Bennet, 1990, p. 16). In this model, industry as well as intermediate and end users of knowledge become part of the extension system.
While in most countries, the main contribution of educational institutions to extension will be the training of qualified, dedicated, and responsible personnel, some Indian agricultural universities have come close to the U.S. model without taking over the full load of extension work. In the field, they have taken over functions which are only inadequately performed by the ministry, thus supporting general extension work. Remarkable features are direct assessment of clients' needs, user-oriented research, quality training for state personnel, and a strong linkage between academic education and field practice. Models vary from state to state. The Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) has its own multidisciplinary extension team in each district, engaged in adaptive research, training, and consultancy. Backed up by extension specialists on campus, they are transmitters and receivers of experiences from researchers, farmers, and state extension workers. At PAU, a unique system of processing these experiences is practised. Regular workshops are held which unite university and department staff from research and extension together with outstanding farmers. New findings and feedback are presented, evaluated, and published as a "Package of Practices" to be used by all extension staff for the next season (Nagel, 1980).
In the Philippines, which works with ministry-operated extension, university field contacts have been combined with practical development work. The University of the Philippines at Los Baños (UPLB) has its own "social laboratory" in rural areas. Transfer of ideas is not limited to production technology, but includes the testing of communication strategies as well as helping farmers to organize themselves. Experiences are channelled back into UPLB teaching and research (Axinn, 1988, p. 102-103).
Animation Rurale. For a historically rather short period, the concept of Animation Rurale (AR) gained importance in francophone African countries such as Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Madagascar (de Wilde, 1967, p. 391-414; Joerges, 1967). Though the original approach is no longer pursued, some of its elements are now being reintroduced into rural development programmes.
Animation Rurale was an answer to the authoritarian and often repressive nature of intervention before independence. Developed originally by the French Institut de Recherches et d'Application des Méthodes de Développement (IRAM), it shows many parallels to the Brazilian experiments of Paolo Freire.
Integration of rural areas into the national system was to be achieved by initiating a dialogue between rural communities (collectivites) and the state. In a dialectical way, increasing competence of villagers to express their own needs was to liberate them from colonial dependence. In order to initiate and perpetuate this process, AR relied on a large number of voluntary collaborators, so-called animateurs. Selected by the villagers themselves these animateurs had to be experienced and well-respected farmers but not traditional leaders. Training, supervision, and support of animateurs were organized by the Ministry of Rural Development. Their task was to initiate discussions within the community on local needs and objectives, thus empowering rural people for a dialogue with the state. At the same time they were to "interpret" government plans to the villagers and acquaint them with services available. The long-term perspective was a replacement of traditional institutions and the creation of "development cells" able to negotiate contracts with the state bureaucracy.
Sülzer and Payr (1990, p. 34) maintain that AR "did not fail as a philosophy of extension... [although]... it did not achieve a large-scale breakthrough on a national level." Lack of sustainable impact was due to internal as well as external factors. The objectives of AR were extremely difficult to operationalize and, as a result, the role of animateurs remained unclear. In addition, lack of rewards and selection mistakes contributed to the fact that many animateurs soon lost interest in their work. Farmers, as it turned out, were more interested in receiving qualified technical assistance, and even if animateurs had successfully initiated village projects, it was the "technicians" who reaped the benefits. Lastly, it is highly questionable whether the administration was seriously committed to creating a system which would curtail its own power.
What has remained is the philosophy of empowerment and many of the practical experiences. Many NGOs use the ideas of Animation Rurale often without realizing their roots. The present discussion on participatory extension shows its lasting influence.
Extension to Selected Clientele
Commodity Based Extension. Next to the ministry-operated general approach, commodity-based extension run by government, parastatals, or private firms is the most frequent extension organization. Clients may be dispersed over a large area or closely connected, as in the case of large, centrally operated irrigation projects. Commodity-based extension is the predominant feature in many francophone countries of Africa (Schulz, 1973), but is also strong in other countries with commercial or export crops.
The original rationale was the generation of revenue as well as the assured supply of tropical products for the colonial powers. Today, goals are still clearly and intentionally production and profit oriented. All aspects of producing and marketing a particular crop are vertically integrated, spanning the whole range from research, advice, and material support given to farmers, to organizing marketing and even exports. Proponents of the approach argue that, by infusing modern technologies and monetary incentives into traditional farming, a cumulative chain of effects is triggered, thus contributing to overall development.
Advantages in terms of organizing the extension function seem obvious. One generally works with well-tested technologies. Objectives and targets can be clearly defined and the organizational structure kept simple. The focus on only one or two crops facilitates training of extension workers who are agents of the society or board concerned. Control of agents and farmers is easy, because they are judged in terms of defined targets.
A closer look at these advantages reveals that they are largely defined from the perspective of the commodity organization. This poses no problem as long as organizational and clients' goals are identical, as was the case for coffee, tea, or sisal boards in the private plantation sector. For small farmers, the situation may be quite different. The rigidity of the system leaves little room for incorporating farmers' needs. The border between control and coercion is often crossed, for example, when farmers are forced to plant commercial crops at the expense of traditional subsistence crops. Extension workers are regarded as successful once they have brought farmers to producing "what and how" the organization wants. The obvious advantage of guaranteed marketing does not automatically entail security for the agricultural producer. Farmers cannot react quickly to price fluctuations, and in some cases quality standards are arbitrarily set in order to increase personal or organizational profits. Many governments have used the approach to excessively extract revenue by dictating low farm-gate prices.
Strengths as well as limitations of the commodity approach lie in its narrow focus. It is useful in terms of technology transfer but leaves out important public interestissues (such as environmental protection), as well as target groups (such as noncommercial producers). A successful combination of general and commodity-based extension at the national level, as practised in East Africa, demands clear policy goals and highly efficient management.
Extension as a Commercial Service. Commercial extension is a rather recent phenomenon and typical of either industrialized forms of agriculture or the most modem sector of an otherwise traditional agriculture. It may be either part of the sales strategy of input supply firms or a specialized consultancy service demanded by an agricultural producer. In both cases, the goal of the organization or the individual is profit earning, which in turn is tied very closely to customer satisfaction. Most directly this is the case for private consultants who will be retired only if their clients feel that expenses made have been profitable. Large input supply firms or rural banks that use their own extension workers as sales personnel must also have a long-term perspective with regard to the competitiveness of their products and services. Negative effects of incorrect application or use will be attributed to the product itself. The clients of commercial extension will also be profit oriented. Their objective is the optimal utilization of purchased inputs or contracted expertise.
The emergence of commercial extension has influenced the debate on who should bear the costs of extension. With escalating budget deficits, the idea of extension as a free public service is no longer being generally accepted. It is argued that those who can afford it should actually pay for advisory services. In the case of commercial input suppliers, the solution is very simple: the costs of extension are included in the product price, as are the costs for research or advertisement. Private consultancy, on the other hand, is costly and affordable only to either large-scale or highly specialized producers.
As a general trend, one observes that public extension in industrialized countries has been under pressure to introduce cost sharing or altogether commercialize advisory work. An approach which combines commercial and public elements is at present being introduced in some of the eastern states of Germany. For example, the Ministry of Agriculture in Brandenburg subsidizes consultancies once they have actually taken place. Farmers have the option either to organize themselves in "extension rings" and employ their own extension workers or to choose an extension consultant who is officially accredited by the ministry once he or she organizes at least twenty clients in an "extension association." In both cases, up to 80 per cent of extension costs within a certain limit are reimbursed to the farmer.
Privatization and cost sharing are propagated in the name of greater effectiveness and efficiency, but are largely motivated by financial constraints. It is obvious that the private sector will be active only in case of reasonable returns, and they will not be concerned with public interest issues:
Because of the selective participation of the private sector, the provision of public good types of information will have to remain a public sector responsibility... public and non-profit organizations... will have to work together to satisfy the needs of those in "orphan" areas. (Umali & Schwartz, 1994)
Client-Based and Client-Controlled Extension. One way of dealing with the shortcomings of large extension systems has been to localize extension and utilize the self-help potential of rural groups. Often organized by outsiders, these decentralized approaches are in a better position to serve the needs of specific target groups, notably those in disadvantaged positions. Close contact with their clients and intimate knowledge of their life situations are essential for the planning of problem-oriented extension activities. Local personalities are identified who take over leader functions once the external (nongovernmental) organization withdraws. The principles of these organizations (awareness, empowerment, participation, self-help) are close to the philosophy of Animation Rurale without the national dimension.
The impact of client-based approaches must be seen on two levels. Directly, they provide benefits to their clients. The diversity and large number of small projects forbid a general statement on their effectiveness in terms of human resource development. It appears, however, that their weakness lies more in the technical field (UNDP, 1991, p. 22). Besides, they can reach only a very limited number of people. Apart from this, they perform an important role as organizational innovators. They have proved that participation can work in practice and that many farmers are highly competent partners in technology development. Government extension services have been forced to rethink their top-down approach, to accept human resource development as an equally important extension goal, and to address the problems of rural women.
A rather unique approach has been practised in Taiwan, where a large share of extension work is done through farmers' associations (Lionberger & Chang, 1970; Axinn & Thorat, 1972). Organized at provincial, county, and township levels, membership totaled 90 per cent of Taiwanese farmers. Extension education is done by agents employed by the farmers' associations at the township level and financed largely by the farmers themselves.
Unlike the small self-help groups discussed above, there are strong and institutionalized linkages with research and other services. The overall extension policy is defined by the government. On the other hand, the clientele is quite different: farms are highly modernized and extension advice is demand driven.
Present and future role of extension staff
1. Enabler – provides farmers with resources, authority, opportunities to be able to do something; capacitates people
2. Educator – facilitates learning for people to deal with their needs
3. Mediator – works with both sides/involved parties to try to help the parties involved in conflict or misunderstanding reach an agreement
4. Farmer aid – or technician roles wherein the extension agent provides technical expertise for people’s technical problems
5. Facilitator – in the dialect, this means “tigpahapsay” o ‘tigpasayon’; mobilizes people into organized action for a purpose






Boss and Sponsors-Government
His or Her Superiors International Agencies

Professional Colleagues
and Organization Other Departments
Intermediate Group
Research
Educational
Industry Media
Students


Subordinates End Users of
General Public Information-
Farmers, etc…









Fig. __ POSSIBLE GROUPS YOU MUST COMMUNICATE WITH


General Principles Regarding Approaches to Agricultural Extension
1. Success of an extension program is directly related to the extent to which the approach fits program goals
2. Participation of rural people tends to facilitate learning and adoption of improved farm
3. Effectiveness of an extension program vary directly with the extent of discipline and seriousness among personnel
4. Effectiveness depends on the extent to which goals of the program are clearly understood by responsible personnel
5. Sustainability depends in the extent to which benefits to both sponsors and clients are greater than costs
6. Information from both indigenous knowledge and international scientific knowledge systems tend to be more effective than those which utilize technical information only
7. Particular approaches will be most successful when they fit national aspirations
8. Cultural factors need to be considered in planning any extension program
9. Approaches used should be gender sensitive
10. More participatory approaches tend to fit best in national systems where public administration is more decentralized.
11. Approach should encourage two-way communication linkages between and among sponsors and clients
12. An approach is effective if it could develop sustained, vigorous, dynamic and creative leadership


FORMULATION OF OBJECTIVES

An objective is a guide that serves as the basis for undertaking various extension or program activities. Normally, objectives are stated as general or specific.

The general objectives are more definite social statements expressing the general purpose of an organization. The specific objectives are also known as operational objectives with the following characteristics: simple or specific (S), measurable (M), attainable (A), realistic (R), time-bound (T).

Objectives, specially working objectives, should be expressed in behavioral terms and are classified into domains. The three domains of behavioral objectives are cognitive, affective and psychomotor.




UNIT 8
PROGRAM PLANNING, MONITORING AND EVALUATION

A program plan is description of the general situation, resources, needs and problems of the people in the area. It also includes the following: a statement of objectives, and goals, the strategies for accomplishing the stated objectives and goals, the schedule of activities (when and how they will be undertaken and by whom), estimate of the budgetary requirement for implementing the various accomplishments or changes made.

It is developed by the community with the help and guidance of the change agent; basis for undertaking extension or development activities in the area.

What is a good, sound program plan?

1. based on an analysis of the situation
- taking into account available resources (both material and human) in the area through any or a variety of methods such as observation, survey, interviews, census, transect maps, walk-throughs, etc.

2. selects programs based on needs
- since not all problems can be responded to an attacked at once, choice of focus and priority is made from those in which the community has the capability of doing through the resources that are available locally

3. determines objectives and solutions that offer satisfaction
- objectives and solution must be attainable and within reach by the community

4. has permanence with flexibility
- must be forward-looking and permanent (anticipating years of related and well-organized efforts)

5. has balance with emphasis
- must be comprehensive enough to include all age groups, sex, creed, community problems and resources; something must stand out to avoid scattered efforts, an a decision must be made as to which is the most urgent that needs to be prioritized

6. has defined plan for work
- good organization and careful planning for action to include:
a) people to be reached
b) goals, dates, and places
c) teaching procedures/methods to be used
d) duties, training, and recognition of volunteer leaders
e) part to be played by extension personnel and other agencies
f) plans for measuring results

7. a continuous process



Programme-planning. The first step in any systematic attempt to promote rural development is to prepare useful programmes based on peoples needs. The development of such programmes, which harmonize with the local needs as the people see them & with the national interests with which the country as a whole is concerned, is an important responsibility of extension personnel at all levels-national,state,district,block & village.
Programme planning is the process of making decisions about the direction & intensity of extension-education efforts of extension-service to bring about social, economic & technological changes.
Principle of extension programme-planning. The planning of an extension programme is done on the basis of certain well recognised principles which should be clearly understood & followed by extension workers. The main principles are:
i. The programme-planning should be based upon a careful analysis of a factual situation.
ii. In a good programme-planning, problems for action are selected on the basis of recognised needs.
iii. A good programme-planning determines objectives & solutions which are feasible & offer satisfaction.
iv. The programme should be permanent & flexible to meet a long-term situation, short-time changes, & emergencies.
v. A sound programme should have both balance & emphasis.
vi. A good programme has a definite plan of work.
vii. Programme-planning is a continuous process.
viii. Programme-planning is a co-ordinating process.
ix. Programme-planning should be educational & directed towards bringing about improvement in the ability of the people to solve their own problems individually and collectively.
x. A good programme-planning provides for the evaluation of results.
The programme-planning process. The steps involved in this process are as follows:
1. Collection of facts. Sound plans are based on availability of relevant & reliable facts. This includes facts about the village people, physical conditions, existing farm & home practices, trends & outlook. Besides, other facts about customs, traditions, rural institutions, peoples' organisations operating in the area, etc. should be collected. The tools & techniques for collecting data include systematic observations, a questionnaire, interviews & surveys, existing governmental records, census reports, reports of the Planning Commission, Central Bureau of Statistics, & the past experiences of people.
2. Analysis of the situation. after collecting facts, they are analysed & interpreted to find out the problems & needs of the people.
3. Identification of problems. As a result of the analysis of facts the important gaps between 'what is' & 'what should be' are identified & the problems leading to such a situation are located. These gaps represent the peoples needs.
4. Determination of objectives. Once the needs & problems of the people have been identified, they are stated in terms of objectives & goals. The objectives represent a forecast of the changes in the behaviour of the people & the situation to be brought about. The objectives may be long-term as well as short-term, & must be stated clearly.
5. Developing the plan of work. In order to achieve the stated objectives & goals, the means & methods attaining each objective are selected & the action plan, i.e. the calendar of activities is developed. It includes the technical content, who should do what, & the time-limit within the work will be completed. The plan of work may be seasonal, short-term, annual or long-term.
6. Execution of the plan of work. Once the action plan has been developed, arrangement for supplying the necessary inputs, credits, teaching aids, extension literature etc. has to be made & the specific action has to be initiated. The execution of the plan of work is to be done through extension methods for stimulating individuals & groups to think, act & participate effectively. People should be involved at every step to ensure the success of the programme.
7. Evaluation. It is done to measure the degree of success of the programme in terms of the objectives & goals set forth. This is basically done to determine the changes in the behaviour of the people as a result of the extension programme. The evaluation is done not only of the physical achievements but also of the methods & techniques used & of the other steps in the programme-planning process, so that the strong & weak points may be identified & necessary changes made.
8. Reconsideration. The systematic & periodic evaluation of the programme will reveal the weak & strong points of the programme. Based on these points the programme is reconsidered & the necessary adjustments & changes are made in order to make it more meaningful & sound.
Programme-planning is not the end-product of extension activities but it is an educational tool for helping people to identify their own problems & make timely & judicious decisions.
From the above mentioned cycle, it is clear that the planning of an extension programme comprises a logical series of consecutive steps. The first 4 steps form the programme-phase. The steps 5-7 form the action-phase. The step 8, i.e. reconsideration, joins the 2 phases together, where it leads to the fact-collecting step, thus beginning once more the never ending or continuous process of planning the extension programme.


The Planning Process

1. Analysis of Situation
- taking into account available resources (both material and human) in the area through any or a variety of methods such as observation, survey, interviews, census, transect maps, walk-throughs, etc.

2. Setting of Program Goals and Objectives
- objectives, mainly derived from problems identified and resources available, have to be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound)

3. Designing the Strategy
- may include the following:
a) selecting approaches for change (institutional, commodity, integrated, area-based)
b) determined altenative solution to problems
c) choosing appropriate extension and communication techniques
d) setting up the organizational structure and staff
e) preparing the budget
f) enlisting support and active participation of community members
g) establishing linkages with other institutions

4. Planning the Program of Activities
- scheduling the various project activities; outlining the activities

5. Evaluation
- Takes place all throughout the whole planning process although it appears to be last in the planning process


MONITORING AND EVALUATION IN EXTENSION

1. Definition of terms
a) Monitoring – process of continuous assessment .at regular intervals, of progress in the project; it is done to assess the implementation of the project to make sure the work is proceeding as scheduled; whether inputs are delivered on time, are used as intended, and have the planned effects
b) Evaluation – using the results of monitoring, it is the process of assessing the strengths, weaknesses, effects, and impacts of the project or activity; assessment of the overall effects of agricultural extension program or project; the degree of farmer adoption of the recommended practices, and their effectiveness in the field

2. Purpose of evaluation
For operational purposes
- Whether it has achieved the intended output and effects and to determine the critical factors involved in the project
- To provide justification for the continuation, modification, or supervision of the project
- To provide objective and analytical information for an accountability report

a. As an analytical tool to improve project design
- To improve and sharpen project objectives and design
- To verify project assumptions and make them more explicit
- To serve as a framework to review the entire process of means and ends to achieve the desired goals

b. For policy purposes
- To ascertain the validity of a given development strategy, approach, assumption, or hypothesis
- To explore and or gain more knowledge about the interrelationships of several actions or policy decisions that affect the efficiency and effectiveness of a group of projects, approaches or strategies on comparative basis


Improving Extension Effectiveness

The organization of an extension service and its management depends on the tasks the organization has to perform and environment in which it operates.

Major changes of the environment that extension organizations have to consider include the following:

1. Increasing demands for agricultural products – because of growing population and increasing incomes
2. Economic liberalization – opens new opportunities for farmers to sell their products on the world market but they are also vulnerable to international competition
3. Unsustainable farming practices – there are many farming practices that are not sustainable; development of more sustainable farming practices require collective decision-making whereas extension in the past was more individual
4. Farmers’ ability to decide on new farming system as well as on new production technologies – farmers must be able to choose among the many options available to him; transfer of technology is not the most important but increasing the ability of farmers to make their own choices
5. New information from many sources – farmers obtain new information not only from government extension services but also from a growing range of information sources
6. Strong forces towards a change in financing of extension organizations – through privatization and financial supports of government to NGOs

Conditions to Improving Extension Effectiveness:

1. Good communication
2. Information
3. Adaptation to changing environments
4. Motivation of Staff/Extension Agents
5. Flexibility
6. Identification of Management Problems
7. Leadership in Extension Organizations
8. Environment

Box 2. A typology of participation: how people participate in development programmes and projects.
Typology Characteristics of Each Type
1. Passive Participation People participate by being told what is going to happen or has already happened. It is a unilateral announcement by an administration or project management without any listening to people's responses. The information being shared belongs only to external professionals.
2. Participation in Information Giving People participate by answering questions posed by extractive researches using questionnaire surveys or similar approaches. People do not have the opportunity to influence proceedings, as the findings of the research are neither shared nor checked for accuracy.
3. Participation by Consultation People participate by being consulted, and external agents listen to views. These external agents define both problems and solutions and may modify these in the light of people's responses. Such a consultative process does not concede any share in decision making, and professionals are under no obligation to take on board people's views.
4. Participation for Material Incentive People participate by providing resources, for example labour, in return for food, cash, or other material incentives. Much on-farm research falls in this category, as faermers provide the fields but are not involved in the experimentation or the process of learning. It is very common to see this called participation, yet people have no stake in prolonging activities when the incentives end.
5. Funcional Participation People participate by forming groups to meet predetermined objectives related to the project, which can involve the development or promotion of externally initiated social organization. Such involvement does not tend to be at early stages of project cycles or planning, but rather after major decisions have been made. These instructions tend to be dependent on external initiators and facilitators, but may become self-dependent.
6. Interactive Participation People participate in joint analysis, which leads to action plans and the formation of new local institutions or the strengthening of existing ones. It tends to involve interdisciplinary methodologies that seek multiple perspectives and make use of systemic and structured learning processes. These groups take control over local decisions, and so people have a stake in maintaining structures or practices.
7. Self-Mobilization People participate by taking initiative independent of external institution to change systems. They develop contacts with external institutions for resources and technical advice they need, but retain control over how resources are used. Such self-initiated mobilization and collective action may or may not challenge existing inequitable distribution of wealth and power.
Source: Pretty (1994), adapted from Adnan et al. (1992).

I. Participatory methods
The creative ingenuity of practitioners worldwide has greatly increased the range of participatory methods in use (see RRA Notes, 1988-1994; IDS/IIED, 1994; Pretty et al., 1995; Chambers, 1992a, 19920; Mascarenhas et al., 1991; KKU, 1987; Conway, 1987). Many have been drawn from a wide range of nonagricultural contexts and were adapted to new needs. The methods can be put into four classes: for group and team dynamics, for sampling, for interviewing and dialogue, and for visualization and diagramming. These methods collected into unique approaches, or assemblages of methods, constitute systems of learning and action. In this section, some key methods are briefly described.
Participation calls for collective analysis and good rapport. Even a sole researcher must work closely with local people. Ideally, though, teams of investigators work together in interdisciplinary and intersectoral teams. By working as a group, the investigators can approach a situation from different perspectives, carefully monitor one another's work, and carry out a variety of tasks simultaneously. Groups can be powerful when they function well, because performance and output are likely to be greater than the sum of the individual members. But shared perceptions, essential for group or community action, have to be carefully negotiated. Yet the complexity of multidisciplinary team work is generally poorly understood. Various workshop and field methods are used to facilitate this process of group formation:
1. Team contracts. Team contracts developed by all the team members help to ensure good group dynamics and may include agreements to hold evening discussions and morning brainstorming sessions. One person may be elected to monitor team interactions to provide feedback. The monitor can make a note of each member's location and record interactions by drawing a circle around individuals' names when they speak or an arrow from talker to person being talked to, with duration of speech recorded in seconds. The results are used simply for showing team members how the discussion developed. It then becomes clear who has dominated and who was quiet.
2. The night halt. Rapport between outsiders and villagers is facilitated by staying in the village. Many have made this an essential part of participatory analysis and planning. It provokes change in outsiders' attitudes: they sleep and eat as villagers do; it allows for early morning and evening discussions when people are less busy; and it is an explicit commitment by outsiders to village life.
3. Work sharing. When outsiders are taught some-thing by villagers, roles are reversed. Professionals soon learn how much skill is required, say, to plough a furrow, transplant rice, weed, lop tree fodder, cut firewood, dig compost, and wash clothes. Such activities prompt changes in attitude and help to build rapport.
4. Rapid report writing, with self-correcting notes. It is essential to record, as a team, the key findings before members disperse to their own organizations. Report writing is made easier by writing a brief summary of how diagrams were constructed and of the key findings. Individuals can be encouraged to keep a private diary or series of notes to focus on things they would like to improve the next time.
5. Shared presentations. The key findings should always be presented to villagers and outsiders. This is an important opportunity for cross-checking and feedback. Professionals present and invite comment and criticism. This is a fundamental reversal of roles and is crucial to establishing the trustworthiness of the findings.
To ensure that multiple perspectives are represented, practitioners must be clear about who is participating. Communities are rarely homogeneous, so there is always the danger of assuming that those participating are representative. Those missing, though, are usually the poorest and most disadvantaged. Sampling is an essential part of these participatory approaches, and several methods are available:
6. Transect walks and direct observation. These are systematic walks with key informants through the area of interest, observing, asking, listening, looking, and seeking problems and solutions. The findings can be mapped on a transect diagram. Most transect walks result in the outsiders discovering surprising local practices such as indigenous conservation practices, multiple uses of plants, and a great variety of crops. It has been instructive for many professionals to realize how much they do not see or do not think to ask about.
7. Wealth rankings and social maps. Wealth ranking is used to classify households according to relative wealth or well-being. Informants sort cards, each with one household name on it, into piles. The wealthiest are put at one end, the poorest at the other, and as many piles as desired are made. The process is repeated with at least three informants. Another method is to conduct the ranking directly on a social map. Villagers are then asked to indicate on the houses the relative wealth classes. Individual assets such as land ownership, animals, and tools can be marked for each household. Wealth rankings are useful for leading into other discussions on livelihoods and vulnerability; producing a baseline against which future intervention impact can be measured; providing a sample frame to cross-check the relative wealth of informants who have been or will be interviewed; and producing local indicators of welfare.
Sensitive interviewing and dialogue are a third element of these systems of participatory learning. For the reconstructions of reality to be revealed, the conventional dichotomy between the interviewer and respondent should not be permitted to develop. Interviewing is therefore structured around a series of techniques that promote a sensitive and mutually beneficial dialogue. This should appear more like a structured conversation than an interview:
8. Semi-structured interviews (SSI). This is guided interviewing and listening in which only some of the questions and topics are predetermined; other questions arise during the interview. The interviews appear informal and conversational, but are actually carefully controlled and structured. Using a guide or checklist, the multidisciplinary team poses open-ended questions and probes topics as they arise. New avenues of questioning are pursued as the interview develops. SSIs are a central part of all participatory methods.
9. Types, sequencing, and chains of interviews. Many types of interviews may be combined in sequences and chains. These include key informant interviews, by asking who the experts are and then putting together a series of interviews (e.g., men on ploughing, women on transplanting and weeding, shopkeepers for credit and inputs); and group interviews, which may be groups convened to discuss a particular topic (focused or specialist groups), groups comprising a mix of people whose different perceptions illuminate an issue (structured groups), casual groups, and community groups.
The fourth element is the emphasis on diagramming and visual construction. In formal surveys, information is taken by interviewers, who transform what people say into their own language. By contrast, diagramming by local people gives them a share in the creation and analysis of knowledge, providing a focus for dialogue which can be sequentially modified and extended. Local categories, criteria, and symbols are used during diagramming. Rather than answering questions which are directed by the values of the outside professional, local people can explore creatively their own versions of their worlds. Visualizations therefore help to balance dialogue and increase the depth and intensity of discussion:
10. Participatory mapping and modelling. This involves constructing, on the ground or on paper, maps or models, using materials such as sticks, stones, grasses, wood, cigarette packets, tree leaves, coloured sands and soils, rangoli powders, coloured chalk, pens, and paper. Great play is made of the issue of who holds the stick or pen. The person who holds the stick talks about what is most important to him or her. As maps take shape, more people become involved, and so want to contribute and make sequential changes. There are many types of maps: resource maps of catchments, villages, forests, fields, farms, home gardens; social maps of residential areas of a village; wealth rankings and household assets surveys on social maps; health maps, where the health status of each family member is shown on each house, using coloured stickers or other markers (categories might include cases of malnutrition, ear infection, jaundice, and the like); topical maps such as aquifer maps drawn by the water diviner or soils maps by soils experts; impact monitoring maps, where villagers record or map pest incidence, input usage, weed distribution, soil quality, and so forth. Some of the most illuminating maps combine historical views with those of the present.
11. Seasonal calendars and activity profiles. Seasonal constraints and opportunities can be diagrammed month by month throughout the year. Ceremonies can be used as a cross-check so that names of months are agreed upon. People use pieces of stick, draw histograms in the dust or with chalk, or make piles of stones, seeds, or powders to represent relative quantities and patterns of rainfall, soil moisture, crops, labour, food consumption, illnesses, prices, animal fodder, fuel, migration, pests, income, expenditure, debt, children's games, and so on. Seasonal calendars can be drawn in linear fashion with twelve months to show a typical year or eighteen months to illustrate changes between years, or they can be drawn in a circle. Daily pat terns of activity can be similarly explored by charting typical activities for each hour of the day, amount of effort, time taken, and location of work. These can be compared for men, women, the old, the young, and others.
12. Time lines and local histories. Historical analyses have been found to be a good icebreaker for field exercises and include detailed accounts of the past, of how things have changed, particularly focussing on relationships and trends. These include technology histories and review, crop histories and biographies, livestock breed histories, labour availability, trees and forest histories, education change, and population change. Folklore and songs are valuable resources for exploring history.
13. Venn and network diagrams. Venn diagrams involve the use of circles of paper or card to represent people, groups, and institutions. These are arranged to represent real linkages and distance between individuals and institutions. Overlap indicates flows of information, and distance on the diagram represents lack of contact.
15. Matrix scoring and pairwise ranking. These methods are for learning about local people's categories, criteria, choices, and priorities. For pairwise ranking, items of interest are compared pair by pair; informants are asked which of the two they prefer, and why. Matrix scoring takes criteria for the rows in a matrix and items for columns, and people complete the boxes row by row. The items may be ordered for each of the criteria (e.g., for six trees, indicate from best to worst for fuelwood, fodder, erosion control, and fruit supply); or participants may put stones, seeds, or berries into piles for relative scoring.
Box 3. A framework for judging trustworthiness.
1. Prolonged and/or Intense Engagement Between the Various Actors. For building trust and rapport, learning the particulars of the context, and to keep the investigator(s) open to multiple influence.
2. Persistent and Paralled Observation. For understanding both a phenomenon and its context.
3. Trangulation by Multiple Sources, Methods, and Investigators: la triangulation triangulée. For cross-checking information and increasing the range of different people's realities encountered, including multiple copies of sources of information, comparing the results from a range of methods, and having teams with a diversity of personal, professional, and disciplinary backgrounds.
4. Analysis and Expression of Difference. For ensuring that a wide range of different actors are involved in the analysis and that their perspectives and realities are accurately represented.
5. Peer or Colleague Checking. Periodic review meetings with peers not directly involved in the original information was constructed and analyzed. Without participant checks, investigators can make no claims that they are representing participants' views.
8. Reports with Working Hypotheses, Contextual Descriptions, and Visualizations. These are "thick" descriptions of complex reality, with working hypotheses, visualization, and quotations capturing people's personal perspectives and experiences.
9. Parallel Investigations and Team Communications. If subgroups of the same team proceed with investigations in parallel using the same system of inquiry and come up with the same or similar findings, then we can depend on these findings.
10. Reflexive Journals. These are diaries individuals keep on a daily basis to record a variety of information about themselves.
11. Inquiry Audit. The inquiry team should be able to provide sufficient information for a disinterested person to examine the processes product in such a way as to confirm that the findings are not a figment of their imaginations.
12. Impact on Stakeholders' Capacity to Know and Act. For demonstrating that the investigation or study has had an impact, including participants having a heightened sense of their own realities, as well as an increased awareness and appreciation of those of other people; the report itself could also prompt action on the part of readers who have been directly involved.
Source: Pretty (1994).


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Notes from UPLB and CMU
Web-based materials: http://www.krishiworld.com/html/agri_extension_edu1.html