The Role of Extension and Advisory Services (EAS)
in Improving Livelihoods and Food Security
- Evidence from the Field -
The symposium will be a convening of experts to share evidence from the field on how to improve food security and rural livelihoods through strengthening extension and advisory services, EAS, in developing countries. The majority of presentations will be based on case studies and other type of research conducted through the MEAS project in the past year. Overarching questions to be addressed include:
The symposium will be a convening of experts to share evidence from the field on how to improve food security and rural livelihoods through strengthening extension and advisory services, EAS, in developing countries. The majority of presentations will be based on case studies and other type of research conducted through the MEAS project in the past year. Overarching questions to be addressed include:
June 5, 2013 (full day)
8:30 am: Registration
9:00 am: Opening Session: Links between Extension and Food Security
Introductions, Program Objectives and Agenda: Andrea Bohn, MEAS Project Manager and Gary Forbes, Facilitator
Keynote Address: by Julie Howard, Chief Scientist USAID/BFS:
"Strategies for Strengthening EAS within the New
Alliance and Feed the Future initiatives"
June 5, 2013 (full day)
Introductions, Program Objectives and Agenda: Andrea Bohn, MEAS Project Manager and Gary Forbes, Facilitator
Keynote Address: by Julie Howard, Chief Scientist USAID/BFS:
"Strategies for Strengthening EAS within the New
Alliance and Feed the Future initiatives"
9:45 am: Introductory Session: Evidence from Feed the Future Countries on how to strengthen EAS
- Challenges, Successes, and Future Opportunities -Experience and outlook from USAID country mission perspective
- Ethiopia (Suzanne Poland, USAID/BFS)
- Mozambique (Paula Pimentel, USAID/Mozambique)
- Malawi - PANEL (Sarah Berry, USAID/BFS - presentation, Brent Simpson - presentation,
Paul Fatch, Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Department of Agricultural Extension Services, Malawi)
10:35 am: Group Photo, then Coffee Break
Common findings and general recommendations from MEAS country assessments
Paul McNamara (focus on Rwanda, Nepal, Liberia) and Brent Simpson (focus on Mali, Malawi, India)
12:45 pm: Speed Dating session: Participants stay in groups at their tables and the 10 presenters on alternative approaches move from table to table (4 minutes for presentation, 4 minutes for discussion, then bell will ring).
- CNFA - Commercial Input Supply and Farm Service Enterprises (Patrick Norrell) (see also http://agrilinks.org/blog/january-ag-sector-council-seminar-private-sector-input-supply-systems)
- GrowCocoa - Farmer Business Schools (Kevin Wilkins)
- Farm Input Promotions - Village Based Advisors (David Wanjau)
2:30 pm: Panel discussion with rapporteurs from the speed dating session
2:45 pm: Coffee Break
3:00 pm: Evidence from effective EAS models or approaches and discussion of their strengths and weaknesses as well as prospects for scaling up Based on MEAS sponsored case studies, evaluations, and action research
- The Grameen Community Knowledge Worker Program in Uganda and Collaboration with the East Africa Dairy Association (Dan McCole, Michigan State University)
- Farmer to Farmer Extension Approaches – Examples from Cameroon, Kenya, and Malawi (Steve Franzel, ICRAF, and Brent Simpson, MSU)
- The East-West-Seed project in Cambodia (Ricky Bates, Abram Bicksler, Rick Burnette - ECHO Asia and Penn State University)
- The East-West-Seed project in Cambodia (Ricky Bates, Abram Bicksler, Rick Burnette - ECHO Asia and Penn State University)
- Using the Human Impact Model in Advising the National Coffee Federation, FNC, Colombia (Ben Mueller, University of Illinois, and Miguel Gomez, University of Cornell) (Also watch the video interview of Ben Mueller and Miguel Gomez, produced by FNC, that summarizes some key findings)
4:30 pm: Plenary session and discussion on:
What are the take-home points?
What is the role of EAS in the adoption of technologies and practices (in terms of agronomic/animal husbandry practices, farm management, integration into value chains, social capital formation, etc.) that can improve rural livelihoods?
Evidence from effective EAS models or approaches and discussion of their strengths and weaknesses as well as prospects for scaling up Based on MEAS sponsored case studies, evaluations, and action research
8:30 am: Registration
9:00 am: Morning Session - Focus on ICT for Extension
Zambia - Training extension agents on Farm Book (Joyous Tata, University of Illinois)
Malawi - The role of Radio-based Extension and Advisory Services (Rex Chapota, Farm Radio Malawi)
Evidence from effective EAS models or approaches and discussion of their strengths and weaknesses as well as prospects for scaling up Based on MEAS sponsored case studies, evaluations, and action research
8:30 am: Registration
9:00 am: Morning Session - Focus on ICT for Extension
Zambia - Training extension agents on Farm Book (Joyous Tata, University of Illinois)
Zambia - Training extension agents on Farm Book (Joyous Tata, University of Illinois)
Zambia - Training extension agents on Farm Book (Joyous Tata, University of Illinois)
Malawi - The role of Radio-based Extension and Advisory Services (Rex Chapota, Farm Radio Malawi)
[See also: Interactive Radio Toolkit at http://www.ictforag.org/radio.
A limited number of hard copies will be available for participants from overseas.]
India - Cost Effectiveness and Service Quality of Video-Enabled Agricultural Extension (Kerry Harwin, Digital Green)
India - Cost Effectiveness and Service Quality of Video-Enabled Agricultural Extension (Kerry Harwin, Digital Green)
Bangladesh - Supporting Strategy Development and Implementation of ICT for Extension (Andrea Bohn, University of Illinois)Kenya - Exploring the promise of ICTs for women farmers and extension agents (Caitlin Nordehn, Cristina Manfre, Deborah Rubin, Cultural Practice, LLC)
1:30 pm: Afternoon Sessions - Focus on Gender
India - How to form and support women’s groups which are capable of disseminating knowledge about agriculture and enterprise effectively and inclusively: A case study of SEWA (Chris Gale, City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development)
Assessment of Extension/Advisory Methods to Reach Rural Women - Comparative analysis conducted in Bangladesh, India, Kenya, and Malawi. (Tahseen Jafry, Glasgow Caledonian University)
Extension and advisory service delivery for women’s groups in Jordan: assessing competencies and building social capital (Kristen Augustine, University of Florida)
1:30 pm: Afternoon Sessions - Focus on Gender
India - How to form and support women’s groups which are capable of disseminating knowledge about agriculture and enterprise effectively and inclusively: A case study of SEWA (Chris Gale, City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development)
Assessment of Extension/Advisory Methods to Reach Rural Women - Comparative analysis conducted in Bangladesh, India, Kenya, and Malawi. (Tahseen Jafry, Glasgow Caledonian University)
Extension and advisory service delivery for women’s groups in Jordan: assessing competencies and building social capital (Kristen Augustine, University of Florida)
India - How to form and support women’s groups which are capable of disseminating knowledge about agriculture and enterprise effectively and inclusively: A case study of SEWA (Chris Gale, City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development)
Assessment of Extension/Advisory Methods to Reach Rural Women - Comparative analysis conducted in Bangladesh, India, Kenya, and Malawi. (Tahseen Jafry, Glasgow Caledonian University)
Extension and advisory service delivery for women’s groups in Jordan: assessing competencies and building social capital (Kristen Augustine, University of Florida)
India - How to form and support women’s groups which are capable of disseminating knowledge about agriculture and enterprise effectively and inclusively: A case study of SEWA (Chris Gale, City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development)
Assessment of Extension/Advisory Methods to Reach Rural Women - Comparative analysis conducted in Bangladesh, India, Kenya, and Malawi. (Tahseen Jafry, Glasgow Caledonian University)
Extension and advisory service delivery for women’s groups in Jordan: assessing competencies and building social capital (Kristen Augustine, University of Florida)
India - How to form and support women’s groups which are capable of disseminating knowledge about agriculture and enterprise effectively and inclusively: A case study of SEWA (Chris Gale, City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development)
Assessment of Extension/Advisory Methods to Reach Rural Women - Comparative analysis conducted in Bangladesh, India, Kenya, and Malawi. (Tahseen Jafry, Glasgow Caledonian University)
Extension and advisory service delivery for women’s groups in Jordan: assessing competencies and building social capital (Kristen Augustine, University of Florida)
Ghana - Women Extension Volunteers - An Extension Approach for Female Farmers (Miriam Hird-Younger, Engineers Without Borders)
3:00 pm: Coffee Break
3:15 pm: Session continues
4:45 - 5:00 pm: Summing up what we have learned so far
Today we will shift from presentations and break-out sessions to workshop style interaction to come up with very concrete responses to these questions:
1. What are practical suggestions for improving extension and advisory services? (Based on what we heard the past two days and also the experience and know how in the audience)
2. What more needs to be done to achieve better coverage in the provision of extension services and have the greatest impact especially on small scale farmers?
3. What more needs to be done to speed up adoption rates of improved technologies or practices (in terms of the sophistication and risk of agronomic/animal husbandry practices, farm management options, integration into value chains, social capital formation, etc.) to have the greatest impact especially on small scale farmers?
Approaches - from Speed Dating session