Publications

Communiqué from FAO Side Event, 3 October 2016 7th GFRAS Annual Meeting, 3–7 October 2016, Limbé, Cameroon

The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the experience of input shops in Niger focusing on their impact on the supply system in the country.

Rural Advisory Services (RAS) are key to agricultural development and to improve the livelihood of millions of family farmers. This policy document looks at what are the specific needs of family farms and the response needed by RAS. The document results from several initiatives held during IYFF 2014: the FAO-GFRAS side event organized at the 5th GFRAS Annual Meeting in Buenos Aires on ‘RAS for family farms’, the side event during the Global Dialogue on Family Farming at FAO HQ and the FAO e-conference on ‘Tailoring RAS to family farms’.

The study describes the historic development of the Danish Agricultural Advisory Services (DAAS). This is the case of a national advisory system owned and managed by the farmer organizations and financed with public subsidies combined with farmer/user payments, gradually developed to full user payment. The links and relations between the empowerment of farmers and their organizations, their evolving roles in advisory systems, and the innovative financial mechanisms in extension, especially pull-mechanisms, are analyzed.

The Farmer Field School (FFS) approach has been very successful and witnessed a strong expansion in many areas beyond crop production. Notwithstanding this success, the adoption of FFS in national extension often remains problematic and FFS activities have often been implemented in the margin of national institutions with strong reliance on donor funding. The creation of an enabling environment for institutional support is essential for expanding the effort, improving quality, and strengthening impact and continuity of the FFSs. This paper aims to analyse opportunities, challenges and implications of institutionalizing FFS at the national level.