What role can agricultural extension and advisory services play in realizing gender equality and improved nutrition?

Mahesh shares two further comments. In the first he mentions that AEAS can effectively promote gender equality by enhancing their role in producer organizations.

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In his second comment Mahesh focuses on the constraints that youth face in becoming a driving force on agricultural matters and how AEAS can help mitigate some of them. AEAS should put more effort into actively reaching out to young people and facilitate their direct involvement into agricultural practices.

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Paul argues that AEAS needs to develop new ideas that will help poor rural women as they often have no funds to invest in new production techniques and rarely have the time to wait for the returns to their investments made. He shares the example of vocational videos on pig rearing that give practical advice on how to simply and quickly improve this practice.

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Lucy suggests that AEAS providers should be local people, skilled in community engagement strategies, that serve as animators of the community for the whole development sector going beyond agriculture and nutrition issues.

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Carlos feels that in order to be able to give meaningful advice that is accepted by the community, extension workers will need to live among the community itself.

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Richard tells us that the access to basic material and information is often lacking in developing countries. Establishing partnerships with private investors might help close this gap allowing communities to access finance, planting material, training, agricultural inputs and markets in order to develop a sustainable supply chain. 

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Mahtab argues that current training programmes of extension workers rarely contemplate a role beyond facilitating access to knowledge, information and technologies. Added to the already high workload, this ends up preventing their deeper engagement in gender and nutrition. Mahtab therefore suggest working on curriculum development so that future extensionists are trained in the inclusion of broader development issues in their work.
He also shares an example from the Medak district of the South Indian state of Telangana. Here active efforts have been made to involve women by explicitly inviting them to meetings together with their children.

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Aklilui feels that AEAS needs to support agricultural innovation and support farmers in developing mechanisms for sustainable adoption of technologies. Regarding gender equality he sees the problem that women, albeit interested in technology, might not have the time due to their many tasks in the household.

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