Investing in agricultural development is good business. Despite the increase of larger farms and the disappearance of small farms, small farming situations still provide the basis for much of contract farming in the developing world.
Investing in rural development is also good business (de Janvry and Sadoulet 2001). While agricultural development and rural development very much interact with each other, they nevertheless need to be distinguished, especially with respect to the extension function and also with regard to discussions of poverty and poverty alleviation.
Agriculture is, as de Janvry and Sadoulet (2001) make clear, only one of four basic potential paths out of poverty in Latin America. Nonetheless, their analysis is likely to be the reality in other regions of the world. The pathways they cite include:
Agricultural path. This is the case of landholders who have sufficient natural capital endowments, and for whom market, institutional and policy contexts allow for the profitable use of these assets. OECD's West Africa Long Term Perspective Study (1998) foresees major changes to the agricultural sector over the next twenty years. Predictions are that a small number of larger, commercial farm operators will emerge, able to invest in new technology, sell into world markets and compete with imports from elsewhere. In drier, lower potential areas, patterns of farming and levels of productivity will change less markedly, with increasing diversification into a range of off-farm sources of income, including migration (OECD 1998).
This agricultural path has been the traditional focus of integrated rural development interventions (World Bank, 1987). The result has been mixed success in reducing poverty and has generally produced unsustainable programmes (World Bank, 1997). However, new programmes such as the SPFS and other extension services focusing on food security and income generation hold promise for catalyzing rural development through advancement of agricultural development among the poor.
Multiple-activity path. This path is dominant among rural households in Latin America. Yet it has been generally unrecognized and unsupported, except for local interventions with limited success at scaling up. Major rethinking about the institutional design of rural development is needed to incorporate the off-farm income dimension into these strategies. It should also be clear that the agricultural part of this path is not the same as that of the agricultural path itself. For farmers involved in multiple activities, agriculture is often a part-time endeavor. The household's off-farm activities are often undertaken to generate liquidity for farm expenditures. The off-farm part of the multiple-activity path is not the same as that for fully landless households that have more flexibility in the labour market and often better location relative to the sources of effective demand, as compared to rural residents who are part-time farmers. A typical observation, thus, is that part-time farmers achieve on average levels of household income that are lower than those of landless workers (L pez and Vald s, 1997).
Assistance path. Well supported in the urban sector, this path is profoundly neglected in rural areas. It applies to the structural poor caught in poverty traps who need permanent income transfers to reach the poverty line, and to households in transitory poverty who need access to safety nets to avoid decapitalization of productive assets and irreversible adjustments to shocks.
Exit path. Although sometimes ignored in discussions of agriculture, migration from rural areas - as an exit strategy - has been the dominant factor in reducing rural poverty in Latin America. Remissions by migrants to Latin America alone are estimated to amount to two billion dollars per annum (Berdegu 2003)13.
These paths are not necessarily mutually exclusive. However, households that come out of poverty can usually be identified with one or the other. Identifying which path offers the greatest promise is important for designing differentiated rural development interventions that can best help poor households escape poverty.
The rural sector, however, remains under-served, despite the major and positive changes in the 1990s in the way governments and development agencies approached rural development and poverty.
The gap between the rich and the poor appears to have broadened over the last thirty years. In Latin America, according to Ferreira and Walton (World Bank 2003, cited in O Globo http://oglobo.globo.com/oglobo/Economia/107898153.htm), slow economic growth and technological development that benefit only the highly educated are the biggest causes for the increase of the gap in the region. The region, which in the past had a competitive advantage because it offered cheap labour, now suffers as the industrialised world seeks highly qualified employees who know how to handle new technologies. As a result, millions in Latin America are unemployed.
Governments with the assistance of international organizations are beginning to promote various decentralized programmes, including subsidiarity-providing communities and rural producer organizations with the potential to develop their own programmes for local development. An interesting approach to local development is the World Bank's promotion of projects that empower rural people via community-driven development (CDD)14, encouraging communities toward self-determination. These CDD projects assist communities in the formulation of proposals that are then reviewed and if accepted, then funded.
In other cases, governments15 have begun to initiate efforts toward nationally integrated and multisectoral extension networks to combat food insecurity. These incipient national system networks include public, private and third sector organizations as well as international projects aimed at food security goals. Governments have forged partnerships with other sectors of society, including multisectoral providers of extension and information services, to foster conditions to end hunger. These governments expect a food security strategy to increase domestic food security and also eventually to facilitate inter- and intra-regional trade in food items. They understand that poor farmers when organized can produce beyond their own needs and enter the export market.
As suggested in the previous section, multiple approaches to poverty and food security are needed to stimulate rural development. Strategies for agricultural and rural development require situational analyses and needs assessments. Any design to fit the needs and potential of different countries will necessarily need to be differentiated. This differentiation will likely be necessary even within countries and within particular areas and among similar but distinct populations. Studies in Bolivia, Colombia, India, Nicaragua, Uganda and Vietnam conclude that much broader and more carefully differentiated extension strategies are required if governments are to reduce poverty among the rural poor (Farrington, et al. 2002).
A fundamental question revolves around income and its generation, although access to resources such as food may not always be dependent upon income. Nonetheless income is a central concern. Three main avenues exist for the poor to acquire income; these include jobs in local industry, creation of individual or family micro-enterprise, and cashcrop farming16. Illustrating the basic differences among various populations and their needs, Orr and Orr (2002) trace two main avenues for small farmers to generate income: agriculture and micro-enterprise. (see Table 2).
Table 2 provides a matrix for analyzing the relationship between agriculture and micro-enterprise. This tool developed out of research conducted in the southern region of Africa from 1995-2001 (Orr and Orr 2002), reflects the different options that households face in combining farm and non-farm activities and links these to different levels of livelihood security. While country specific, the matrix provides useful insights in the needs of the rural poor. The vertical Y-axis of the matrix shows the level of household income from agriculture, and the horizontal X-axis shows the level of income from micro-enterprise. The household's position on the matrix reflects the level of income from each of these two livelihood strategies. Households in the bottom left-hand corner are subsistence farmers with limited income from both agriculture and micro-enterprise. Depending on their objective, households can move up, along or diagonally across the matrix. Households that move up the Y-axis specialize in commercial agriculture at the expense of micro-enterprise. Households that move along the X-axis specialize in micro-enterprise at the expense of agriculture. Households along the diagonal tend to balance agriculture with micro-enterprise.
As the Table 2 illustrates, multiple approaches are required to meet the needs of producers in rural areas. At one end of the spectrum some farmers with little or no land and no income-generating activities will be simply surviving from day to day, and small farmers with mixed cropping and livestock arranging will just be coping. Others with strong farm production and off-farm income will adapt to new circumstances and show potential for immediate development. Still others will accumulate capital as a result of balance between farm and non-farm income. Whom to serve first, what capabilities to be developed, and what programmes to provide, as well as how to fund particular projects - these are hard questions that precede hard choices.
Given the range of situations, it makes little sense for government to commit to any one option. Berdegu and Escobar (2001) also highlight distinct situations among small producers: (a) market-driven, where agriculture is a profitable and competitive enterprise; (b) market-oriented but asset constrained, where small farmers may have incentives to embark on market-oriented agricultural innovation processes, but lack the capacity to fully respond to that favourable context; and (c) context- and asset-constrained, where households lack most types of assets aside from unskilled labour, and often possess very little land and operate in unfavourable environments. If in the first instance the correct policies and institutions are in place, then the policy considerations elaborated above may lead to a win-win scenario for growth and poverty reduction. Still, the second instance according to Berdegu and Escobar may represent the best opportunity in economic, social and also political terms for linking agricultural innovation and poverty reduction policies in developing countries. The third instance, they argue, leaves little room for improvement of their situations from agriculture-led growth unless the constraints are removed or at least significantly reduced by means of broad-based development policies.
Table 2: The relationship between agriculture and micro-enterprise
Reference: Orr, A. and S. Orr. (2002). Agriculture and Micro Enterprise in Malawi's Rural South. London: ODI, AgREN Network Paper No. 119.
The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2001 (FAO 2001) notes that vulnerable groups are predominantly in rural areas, and constitute often five, six or more major groups17. Finding out about the livelihood systems of poor people is an essential first step in identifying the options they have for improving their lot, and that profiling of vulnerable groups is a useful way of doing this. Three key questions need to be answered in order to guide this action: who are the food-insecure? where are they located? why are they food-insecure?
FAO has developed "vulnerable group profiling" as a method to help countries find the answers to some of these questions. The method, described in The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2000, is based on the assumption that food-insecure people are found within larger population groups that are exposed to vulnerability factors, such as low-income, insecure land tenure or a deteriorating natural resource base. Not only does identification and characterization of homogenous vulnerable groups make it possible to determine within each group who the food-insecure are, where they are located and why they are food-insecure, "it also helps to identify the options open to different groups for improving their incomes and other aspects of their circumstances that contribute to food insecurity" (FAO 2001).
The distinctions made in these discussions (de Janvry and Sadoulet 2001; Berdegu and Escobar 2001; and FAO 2000, 2001) indicate the enormity of the task. In many cases, hard choices may need to be made at initial stages in determining who will be served, what capabilities will be developed, and what programmes provided. Some specialists have suggested that at initial stages triage18 may be necessary (Christoplos 2000; Farrington, Christoplos, Kidd and Beckman 2002). Farrington, Christoplos, Kidd and Beckman suggest that triage may mean "a decision to give up efforts to support subsistence producers in their production strategies, and instead look at ways to support the creation of other rural employment (on-farm and non-farm) and migration".
Differentiated strategies require that governments consider two different organizational tasks: the coordination of multi-sectoral entities (public, private and third sector) and the implementation of programmes to assist diverse rural communities, farmers groups and households toward improved farm systems and livelihoods. Dialogue and cooperation are demanding, and will likely call for new attitudes and skills.
Government will probably need to improve the capabilities of the multi-sectoral partners (including its own relevant public sector agencies, such as agriculture, water, education, health, transportation, interior) and at the same time the capabilities of community and farmer group leaders. The programmes developed and promulgated by the different sectoral partners will also require new efforts at financing their programmes and eventually evaluating them for the purpose of upscaling.
In the final analysis, differentiated strategies will need to be adopted to deal with the great diversity of people involved. Not all poor rural households will involve agriculturists, for example. Therefore agriculture is only one avenue for reducing income poverty. Even within the context of agriculture, no one strategy or programmatic approach will accomplish everything. As argued above, a differentiated strategy and multiple approaches will need to be devised on the basis of various elements, such as: the different types of poverty, the determinants of the poverty situation, the contexts in which poverty occurs, and the livelihood strategies that the poor in each particular situation have adopted. Off-farm livelihood strategies are extremely important (Ellis 1998, 1999).
No matter how often the statement is made that there is no single reform orientation, no one approach, method or content that suits all potential clients who might be served or stimulated to adopt practical information, administrators and programme developers seek a formula that will make all further determinations. While this is a tendency among bureaucracies and generally true, nonetheless there are many lessons that have been learned and many development explorations in progress, and these need to be considered in any diagnosis of situational needs and in any dialogue at the national level.
The observation evident from the above discussion is that agriculture is only one aspect of rural development and other elements need to be addressed. Governments need to act to develop policies that promote communication for rural development, utilizing existing technologies such as radio but also exploring other communication means, perhaps the development of rural information centres, for extending information to rural populations that assist them in their basic needs.
Just as the distinction needs to be made between agriculture as an aspect of rural development and other, non-agricultural elements as aspects of rural development, so a distinction needs to be made between "agricultural" extension and "rural" (or rural development) extension.
The distinction is needed. For example, extension agents trained in agronomy and livestock development are unprepared to take on the various roles arbitrarily assigned to them by those eager to solve development problems on paper. Agricultural extension agents have already been commandeered to take on tasks involving construction of postharvest on-farm infrastructure19, marketing and processing, farm management and the organization of farmers into special agricultural interest groups. Preparation in these areas requires in-depth knowledge, positive attitudes and special skills training, and selectivity as to which agents are likely to respond well to such training.
Tasks associated with "rural extension" include micro-enterprise development, nonformal literacy education, family planning, nutrition, health and other rural, non-agricultural areas needing attention. In would be easy to state simply that these tasks must be assigned to either a separate or integrated extension staff. Certainly, it cannot be assumed that specialists in agriculture will overnight become specialized in these other, equally demanding, practices.
A multi-sectoral extension strategy and network of providers covering both agricultural and non-agricultural extension, involving different agencies and organizations, is necessary. A separate or integrated extension staff, one part of which is dedicated to agricultural activities and the other involved in non-agricultural activities, could be established in the near future. One answer-as a first step-is development of a communication strategy that operates to serve both of these two major populations in rural areas: the people who work the land for a living and those who do not.
Strategies that include communication for rural development as a significant aspect of agricultural and rural development are sorely needed. Efforts in this direction are being made, but governments have yet to recognize fully the potential of this factor in promoting public awareness and information on agricultural innovations, as well as on the planning and development of small business, not to mention employment opportunities and basic news about health, education and other factors of concern to rural populations, particularly those seeking to improve their livelihoods and thereby enhance the quality of their lives.
Rural development is often discussed together with agricultural development and agricultural extension. In fact "agricultural extension" is often termed "rural extension" in the literature. In contrast, rural development includes but nonetheless expands beyond the confines of agriculture, and furthermore requires and also involves developments other than agriculture. Accordingly, government should consider the establishment of a communication policy that while supporting agricultural extension for rural development also assumes the role of a "rural extension" service aimed as well at diffusing non-agricultural information and advice to people in rural areas.
A communication policy would aim to systematically promote rural communication activities, especially interactive radio but also other successful media such as tape recorder and video instructional programmes. Computers and the Internet may not yet be accessible to rural communities but they serve the communication intermediaries and agricultural extension agents who provide information to rural populations. Other devices such as cell phones hold considerable promise for the transfer and exchange of practical information.
For reaching the final agricultural and basic needs information users in rural areas today, radio is the most powerful and cost-effective medium. However, other traditional and modern communication methods are equally valuable, depending on the situation and availability, like face-to-face exchanges (via demonstration and village meetings); one-way print media (such as, newspapers, newsletters, magazines, journals, posters); one-way telecommunication media (including non-interactive radio, television, satellite, computer, cassette, video and loud-speakers mounted on cars); and two-way media: (telephone, including teleconferencing, and interactive (Internet) computer).
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have proved to be important for Internet users and for the intermediate users who work with the poor. Pilot experiences show that various media are valuable for assisting agricultural producers with information and advice as to agricultural innovations, market prices, pest infestations and weather alerts.
ICTs also serve non-farming rural people with information and advice regarding business opportunities relating to food processing, wholesale outlets and other income-generating opportunities. In the case of non-agricultural rural development interests, a communication for rural development policy would aim to promote diffusion of information about non-agricultural micro-enterprise development, small business planning, nutrition, health and generally serve to provide useful, other-than-agriculture information.
By its very nature as mass media, communication for rural development can provide information useful to all segments of rural populations. However, it would serve as a first effort toward advancement of "rural extension" services and activities aimed at rural development concerns beyond those of agriculture. Thus, extension and communication activities would be expected to work in tandem, allied in the common cause of supporting income-generating activities, both agricultural and non-agricultural.
Communication as related to extension services immediately suggests several avenues of mutual support. For example: these would include national services relating to extension and communication, specialized extension communication services, extension services promoted by producers, commercialized extension services, and mass media extension-related services. A similar orientation toward other aspects of rural development information and technical advice is evident considering the de Janvry-Sadoulet rural development pathways and other related rural development needs such as information and assistance with health problems, most notably Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) in case of sub-Saharan Africa.
Rural extension and radio need to be more purposely connected. Radio, according to contemporary specialists (FAO 2003c), is under utilized at present. While ICTs and their connection to radio hold promise for the future, some consider radio to be "the one to watch" (FAO 2003c). In this connection, regional networks are being launched. Examples are The World Association for Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) and the Latin American Association for Radio Education (ALER). Global initiatives have begun: Developing Countries Farm Radio Network (DCFRN) and UNESCO Community Media Centres.
The multidimensional nature of poverty and the vulnerability it imposes on many in rural areas means that any agent of development needs first of all to ascertain the felt and the observed needs of those in dire straits. This is exactly what has come to pass especially in participatory programmes. Extension development agents - i.e., facilitators, advisers, and specialists - often spend the initial part of programme development discussing problems, issues and needs with participants. It soon becomes clear there are many problems and numerous issues and that some times enormous gaps exist between what the extension agent sees as the group's needs and what the group feels are their needs.
During this diagnostic period, the problems, issues and needs (leaving aside the constraints that may be operating to cause or worsen the problems, issues and needs of the group) are likely to embrace both agricultural and non-agricultural rural development needs. It makes little difference to the group that their concerns fall into different categories. Extension field staff are often challenged by the participants' problems regarding health, education, and various other problems and needs.
While agricultural and non-agricultural needs may blur at the basic diagnostic stage in developing participatory extension programmes, they nonetheless are quickly distinguished. Agricultural extension agents are prepared to strengthen - whether in terms of productivity, management or organization - the capacity of those who cultivate the land, for agriculture is their discipline and their expertise, but other albeit important rural development needs and expertise fall outside their realm. SPFS and other extension type participatory programmes confirm this fact.
Thus, what can be observed is that other institutions concerned with nonagricultural issues, needs and problems must be strengthened and, as suggested in this section, the potential of communication for rural development needs to be promoted especially at the community level.
