I think this forum is scheduled to wrap up tomorrow so allow me a follow-up comment to my previous comment.
It looks like my comment, which was submitted at the request of one of the moderators, has been orphaned, with no follow-up commentary. Instead the discussion continues to endorse and promote the expansion of extension services without regard to the funding available to recruit extension personnel or provide the operational needs that would allow them to be effective and reach the majority of the intended beneficiaries. Please as you promote expanded role of civil services make certain the funding is there or you will simply squander limited tax revenue funds.
Also, as I commented previously I think you need to review the message being send to assure that it is appropriate enough the beneficiaries can appreciate it. For nutrition I suggested that what improved nutrition being promoted must be affordable or producible by the beneficiaries, particularly if they are expected to engage in heavy manual labor requiring exerting 4000 kcal/day or more.
Please allow me to return to my agronomic base, the historic base for most extension programs, and challenge if the agronomic message is really suitable for the smallholder beneficiaries. There is a major problem in the agronomic technology development and transfer process. This is what I rather provocatively call the genocide oversight. Sounds horrible but unfortunately too close to the truth. Agronomic technology is typically developed through small plot research, perhaps plots only 4x6 m. This does an excellent job of determining the environmental physical potential of an area. However, it says nothing about what it will take to expand that small plot result across the rest of the field, farm or smallholder community. It just assumes it is not a problem. Basically, what is being done for the past 50 years is demanding that a poor hungry exhausted farmer, who is lucky to have access to 2000 kcal/day that will allow him to only work 3 or 4 limited diligent hours per day, put it a full day of effort requiring over 4000 kcal as mentioned above. That doesn’t work and is the reason for my provocative label of “genocide oversight”. The net result is that it takes up to eight weeks to get basic crop establishment, and rendering the wonderful research results null and void. Isn’t it a little absurd and perhaps a little arrogant to expect the hungry smallholders to be as effective in managing their farm in the same manner as the nearly unlimited resources of an experiment station or demonstration plot? Who within the technology development and dissemination process is responsible to determine the operational requirements, labor access to machinery, etc. to extend the small plot demonstration to the rest of the farm? Then determine if that labor is available and if not what are the rational compromises the farmers has to make in adjusting the research/demonstration results to their limited operational base. Perhaps they have already optimized the research result to their 8 week crop establishment time. Until this issue is address won’t the extension message continue to mostly badger farmers on information they have a good knowledge of but not the means to take advantage of. Please review the following webpage:
http://webdoc.agsci.colostate.edu/smallholderagriculture/OperationalFea…
Will this hold for nutrition promotions as well as agronomic promotions?
Dr. Dick Tinsley