The Role of Extension Services for Obtaining and Running the Rural Development Projects

Agricultural extension, being a service that involves activities of a large number of persons and being designated for a larger number of beneficiaries, must be rational organised in the way of achieving its objectives in time and with the smallest cost for labour, materials and financial resources. Regardless the political, social and economical circumstances of the country for which the extension service in designated, the conditions that we have in mind are in a continuous process of changing, and, because of this, the objectives that must be accomplished by agricultural extension are or must be adjusted for solving the requirements in an optimal way.

As a result of potential changes, in the following years, of the environment in which the specific relations of agricultural extension activities are taking place, these services will be re-organised, as a result of a radical process of adaptation. The change will be necessary because the survival of an extension service will be uncertain if it will not be able to face the social, informational or by any other nature changes of the environment that, in the same time, is supposing, will become more competitive. Even more, would be necessary important changes regarding the practical modality of establishing in the future the objectives that extension agents will decide to achieve.

In some countries, for example in the United States, agricultural extension is provided by agricultural universities or by schools with agricultural profile. Even if this system works well in the United States, trying to adapt it for developing countries failed, because the Ministry of Agriculture realised that can not fulfil its programme of rural development without an extension service that support it. As a result, in these countries, agricultural universities assume themselves only the role of providing agricultural extension for small areas, mainly for testing new methods. In fact this method in used in many countries independently of level of development, on the one hand because this way the government let to universities the responsibility of testing new technologies and on the other because universities have the most qualified labour for such tests, superior to the one of Ministry of Agriculture.

The future of involving of agricultural extension in the programme of the rural development is conditioned by a number of challenges for extension. The most important one seems to be the solving of the aspects linked by the globalisation of economy, fact that will make more difficult the implementation of the programmes for more and more large and non-homogenous areas, and, in the same time, the results control and evaluation. Can be emphasised other two problems: the more acute problem for assuring the sustainability of programs and achieving the government interest.

Control. Extension organisations are similar with other human organisations, in which the ones who have the power control the others, that mean that the ones who control an extension service can decide for the programs and employees they want. Once the extension organisation become more and more complex, its power will increase and it will be more distant by beneficiaries. The employees of such organisation will be more comfortable together with their colleagues or other persons with a similar preparation and social status, not in favour of beneficiaries, the distance between them increasing continuously - fact that could be observed in the lack of interest for local problems and needs, therefore in the decreasing of efficiency.

If a national organisation wants to answer more active to the needs of rural development, one of the strategies is to decentralise its functions and, sometimes, to adopt decisions at local level. Those organisations that continue the decentralisation will share a part of its functions with beneficiaries or beneficiaries' associations, fact that will increase even more the involvement of both parts in solving the development problems for the beneficiaries' interest.

Programme continuity. For many times the organisations created by different development programmes or projects run under good conditions as log as there are external provisions of personnel and resources. Autonomous projects are, many times, under the powerful tension to succeed, and the external personnel is, often, present only for a limited period of time, that being a reason for following with predilection the success in short time, in opposition to long time development. The consequence of this approach (experts following only their scope, rigid control, unidirectional utilisation of local groups) is the crash of entire activity when experts leave the organisation.

Agricultural extension is confronting with economical and technical aspects of agricultural sustainability, through the programmes it develops. But there are other purposes of political, social, cultural etc. type, in which agricultural extension has the role to promote different interests.

Participation. The participation problem is not a new one regarding the agricultural extension; during the middle of the previous century it was recognised that, both in extension and community development, an efficient instrument for acquiring the relevance and the success, was to create programmes in which all who were included, participated to all stages: planning, implementation and evaluation. But the idea is not widely accepted, especially, by the ones who have the power, form different political, cultural or economical reasons.

There are a lot of participation examples and types, some of them being real successes, others failures. Many times the difference between success and failure is given by the possibility of beneficiary's involvement in the moment of deciding the content, the objectives and the methods to use. In other words, the more active is involved the beneficiary in all the planning and implementation stages of the project, the bigger are the chances for success.

But, in many extension services, exspecially the ones controlled by government, the participation approach is different. The agents start from the premise that beneficiaries are not competent enough for deciding the objectives and the content of the programme of extension, just because many of them have a poor professional preparation. That is why those agents consider that only experts or scientist can decide upon what is the best. It is one of the examples of the substitution of the clients' knowledge, in a top-bottom approach. It can not be denied that, in some special situations, that require extremely special knowledge, this approach obtain good results, but in day-by-day activity of agricultural extension it leads, inevitable, to a failure.

It is easy to recommend participation, but it is hard to apply it. The modality of participation is extremely different by zone-to-zone, function of culture, economical, social or educational aspects. For that reason, there is not a participate model that can be successfully applied anywhere, the extension agents being the ones, who have the responsibility for finding the most efficient techniques to attract the beneficiaries into the whole process of decision, implementation and evaluation, because this is the only way for continuing the development in the future.

Government-interests. Agricultural extension agents are, for many times, members of diverse extension agencies, and because of this they have to support the achieving of general objectives of that agency, that are, usually, part of Ministry of Agriculture. Therefore, they will be constrained to limit their actions they consider being efficient for the beneficiary. Government invests in agricultural extension as an instrument of rural development implementation, when it considers that this is an efficient method for promoting governmental policy in order to achieve certain national objectives.

Among the objectives that government could promote through extension services some of them can be in conflict, for example increasing the agricultural production in short time is almost always a consequence of using methods and systems of production that are not recommended by a sustainable agriculture and, even more, an increased production can be a reason for price falling and producers revenue decreasing.

Governmental objectives depend, in a great measure, by the government that proposes and proposes them. Therefore, when the system is a democratic one and permits the opinions divergence, the government is characterised by govern variation, and, inevitable, the agricultural policy of the country is changing. If for a govern could be critical the rural development, for the next one the accent can be put on people's welfare, and for this reason the vision, instruments and financing relation will be radically changed. The change inevitably implicates the support of extension services, which are more responsible if government finances them for promoting the necessary measures.

It is obvious that the efficiency of extension services is much higher if the objectives of the government are similar to particular interests of the producers (including for cultivation new breeds, with a higher production; practising of crop rotation for reducing the erosion; promoting new technologies etc.), in these situations the objectives are essential instruments for the government. In these cases the success depends on the degree of gaining, through earlier actions, the confidence of the beneficiaries by the extension services and agents that they are able to offer valuable advice.

It must be appreciated the role played by extension services in supporting of those objectives of government policy that are not entirely in the interests of the beneficiaries. The consequence is loosing, at least partially, of the confidence that they earlier has gained and, even more, this lack of confidence can be revealed later even in the case of promoting only the interest of the beneficiaries. Practically instruments can be used that support governmental interests but that are not influencing at all the producers, and instruments that are in the interest of the producers, but totally irrelevant for the policy followed by government.

Figure 1. Relation between the interest of the government and the client's interest
(after van der Ban, 1999, page 15)

Beneficiaries can obtain information and support not only from extension services but also from the diverse information sources that are, at the moment, in a rapid process of development. The development of informational and communication technologies is can open new opportunities for giving information, and because of this, the ones that use them will ask for advice form extension services only if these can offer more relevant information, easier to understand and to use in shorter time and with less costs that other systems of information. This is one of the aspects why those organisations that offer extension services are more required in less developed areas, in placeswhere the informational technology is poorer.

asist. drd. Felix Arion
asit. drd. Cristian Merce
prep. Cosmin Mihasan
prep. Anamaria Horvat

University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine

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