Publications

The World Food Summit held in Rome in 1996, followed by the World Food Summit: five years later, in 2002, and the Millennium Development Goals, all underline the importance of food security. The obligation to eradicate food insecurity requires several actions, involving various public and non-public institutions. The purpose of this publication is to highlight the important role of agricultural and rural extension in the fight against hunger. Extension is seen as a broad effort directed at rural development linking with other sectors, and not just as an agricultural technology transfer service. This paper touches upon the global trends in ...read more

Published as FAO Research and Technology Paper 8, it presents a report of the first six e-mail conferences hosted by the FAO Biotechnology Forum from March 2000 to May 2001. Each conference was moderated, lasted roughly two months and focused on agricultural biotechnology in developing countries. The first four dealt with the appropriateness of currently available biotechnologies in the crop, fishery, forestry and livestock sectors, while the remaining two dealt with the implications of agricultural biotechnology for hunger and food security and the impact of intellectual property rights. The publication includes the background and summary documents for each of the ...read more

This comprehensive report includes an overview and analysis of all public and private extension service providers, a targeted strategy to enhance co-ordination and collaboration between both public and private extension providers.

This study provides an overview of the theoretical discussions about the changing balance between public and private goods and roles in research and extension as related to the agricultural knowledge system. These discussions are used for an analysis of developments in The Netherlands.

What can you show employees if you can't show them the money? The answer sounds almost simple-minded: Improved job performance and satisfaction. The poor performance of African national extension systems is often linked to the low educational level and dwindling motivational levels of most frontline extension personnel.

The management practices necessary for effective operation of extension services in Central and Eastern Europe have been reviewed. The difference in operational requirements between public extension and commercial consultancy services has been recognised. Then factors influencing the setting of clear aim, importance of stakeholders involvement in the preparation and operation of business plans, etc.

This publication from the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (RAP) addresses the experiences of a training programme for disabled farmers in the poor north eastern region of Thailand.

The initiatives in this publication draw on recent agricultural extension reform measures introduced in several high-income, middle-income and low-income countries. The focus, however, is on reform measures that promote food security and poverty alleviation among small-holders in low-income countries. The initiatives are broadly envisaged as applications in the principals set out in the FAO/World Bank document on Strategic Vision and Guiding Principles (2000) for promoting Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems for Rural Development (AKIS/RD), and other frameworks emphasizing the changing extension environment (Neuchâtel 1999). The AKIS/RD vision calls for institutional reforms involving pluralism, cost recovery, privatization, decentralization and subsidiarity, with an ...read more

The mandate to develop these guidelines resulted from the World Food Summit Plan of Action. Objective 3.4 of Commitment Three in the Summit's Plan of Action stated that "governments, in collaboration with the international and scientific community, in both private and public sectors, as appropriate, will strengthen national research systems in order to develop coordinated programmes in support of research to promote food security". In identifying how this might be done, FAO, the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program (SANREM CRSP) of the University of Georgia, USA and the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) facilitated ...read more

For agricultural extension directors to guide their organizations through this demanding and difficult period, they will need to direct their attention to the main issues and concerns. They must concentrate the work of extension on those activities where it has a comparative advantage. For example, extension should focus its efforts on those knowledge-based technologies that are central to farmers' concerns and that will maintain the natural resource base. In general, these are subject-matter areas that will not be taken up by the private sector. Examples include dissemination of production management technologies that are specific to different crop and livestock systems; ...read more