Need for strong research, linkages to boost plantations’ productivity

8 October 2012 06:30 pm Views - 3119

by Dr. N.YOGARATNAM
The assumption in this article is that the flow of information from agricultural research to farming communities and vice versa requires that continuous contact be maintained by individuals able to make information comprehensible to farmers. These individuals are extension workers and are at the centre of information flow. They remain the link between research workers and the farmers if the link is weak then agricultural productivity will not increase.

Extension should not be the prerogative of public institutions. Private and non-governmental organizations can also play an important role in the transfer of technology to farmers Therefore these organizations need to be fed with information from research.


Productivity
Agricultural research and extension institutions can help to boost productivity. However, these institutions cannot operate in a vacuum, irrespective of how good they may be. There are a number of prerequisites for research and extension to operate successfully. Firstly, there must be government commitment to agriculture and agricultural research and extension. This presupposes that economic policies must be supportive of agriculture and the institutional environment must be supportive of research and extension. Second, public research and extension should not work in isolation  Closer working relations between research and extension organizations must be encouraged.

Research and extension are long-term processes and returns on investment may take at least 10 to 15 years to realize. Public-sector research and extension require considerable investment of capital and operational budgets to be effective.

The topic under discussion is research-extension linkages in relation to efforts to increase crop production. Research in this context can be defined as the development of better crop husbandry to suit a particular demand or the generation of new technology to solve a particular constraint. Extension can be defined as the furthering and popularization of knowledge. It signifies the stimulation of desirable agricultural illumination. It can also mean information flow into farming communities and flow of information from farmers to researchers, input and services suppliers and policy makers.

 Extension plays an important role in the formulation of policy for agricultural development and sits at the centre of the agricultural information network. It is not a passive conduit but an active system that can be directed, it seeks out and organises information and then channels it to and, equally important, from farmers. This article argues that research-extension linkages are very important in transferring developed technologies from those who generate them to the users. To communicate effectively, research must be as strong and efficient as extension. Both must have well-qualified and motivated staff who have an adequate resource base to work from.


Information flow
It has been stated that agricultural development begins with increased control over the environment and increased output of desirable plants and their technologies. This development must be a sustainable one, which is explicit to the promotion of agricultural technologies that are ecologically sound, economically viable, socially just and meet with the needs of the present population without compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy their own needs. Hence, for both research and extension sustainable agriculture must be the key strategy. An agricultural system performs well if the developed or generated technology is comprehensively transferred to the users.

It has been argued that scientists involved in basic, strategic, applied and adaptive research, together with subject-matter specialists, village-level extension workers and farmers, should be seen as participants in a single agricultural knowledge and information system. The interface between research and technology transfer is an important one in determining the performance of the whole system. Historically, research has stopped too early in what should be a continuous and dynamic process of developing and diffusing new technology. Researchers have been physically and mentally isolated from farmers, with the tendency to hand down an unfinished, untested product to extension staff.

 Extension contact staff - squeezed between the farmers they live among, who often ridicule the technologies they bring, and their superiors, who demand results in line with policy directives - have been caught in a crisis of morale.


Bridging the gap
One of the known ways of bridging the gap between research and extension is the method adopted by medium-sized and small businesses. Such businesses become more innovative by enhancing their capacity to utilize external information. The ‘process consultation’, which involves introducing a step-by-step model of the innovation process thus stimulating the creativity of company staff members and encouraging the use of external information, is recommended. In agriculture, process consultation is a useful concept as it complements the role played by expert consultation by providing an external input of information or technology. Process consultation is a means of mobilizing people, educating them and organizing them to become effective participants in the agricultural knowledge and information system. Information from external sources is crucial to the effective functioning of any information system, but if the system does not have the capacity to generate and enhance appropriate roles for its constituent parts, it will not be in a position to absorb such information.

In an attempt to improve the linkage mechanism, plantation industry must apply a number of approaches. The annual report of a research institute is one way of linking research with extension. Other methods include surveys of farmers’ problems conducted jointly by research and extension and quarterly meetings between research and extension programmes to discuss current and future activities. Regularly published annual reports are useful for scientific staff and some farmers. Annual workshops where research and extension activities are presented to a large audience is another useful mechanism. A pre-workshop meeting at which senior project officers meet to transform research findings into recommendations is also helpful. Training programmes where research officers explain details of latest recommendations to field agents (extension staff organized in groups according to agro-climatic zones) and at which extension workers can raise issues encountered in the field would also be useful. Field days organized on quarterly basis during the year involving researchers, extension workers and farmers are another approach.
Many companies practice ‘body swapping’, a system where a researcher in basic research can be posted to the research and development (R&D) department of the company. This can be applied to agriculture where a similar exchange of staff takes place in the research-extension liaison officer model. These officers can be recruited from the extension system to work in on-farm adaptive research teams, where they play an especially important role in enlisting the support of extension services once technology is ready for more widespread testing and dissemination.


 Group composition
It is also argued that although linkage mechanisms have become both varied and more sophisticated in recent years there exists some interface that no linkage method can bridge. For example, the status or functional differences between two institutions (research and extension departments) may be too great, their goals too divergent, their competition for the same resources too keen, or the span in the calibration of the research-practice continuum may be too long. Therefore these problems should be examined and ways found to improve linkage. One such way is to use subject-matter specialists and technical liaison officers to:

•  establish links with input suppliers so as to increase the likelihood that necessary inputs will be available and
• maintain liaison with research in order to keep abreast of new technical developments and help translate field problems into researchable questions
• provide technical support to field staff and pick up field problems from them.

Important functions of technical liaison are adaptive research, training, developing reference materials and training aids, trouble shooting and responding to extension agent’s requests for help.

The research-extension linkage can operate effectively if there is cooperation between domains or categories. For example a Tea plantation manager may need integrated information from the crop production specialist, the pests & disease control services, the fertilizer development unit and the economic services unit. Communication across disciplines is not always easy. One way of improving coordination has been to appoint cross-section regional extension leaders who report directly to the overall director.


Complexity of extension
Extension involves changing human behaviour through communication. Therefore the umbrella mandate of extension is to enhance the capacity of farm families to deal with their problems and to meet new opportunities. The major task is information transfer.

To be effective, extension advisory services have to provide information ranging from home economics to farm financial management. This requires competent institutions and mechanisms for both disseminating and receiving information.

 Smallholder development
 Four strategic elements to increase smallholder agricultural production can be identified. These are the needs to:

1. Strengthen national and regional capacity to develop and transfer technology needed to assist smallholders

2. Increase national capacity within the region to recruit, train and retain professionals required in research, extension and training

3. Develop and strengthen use of a systems approach to agricultural research, extension and training for programmes that focus on smallholder problems and solutions

4. upgrade national capacity to conduct plantation agricultural policy research and analysis     


 Conclusion
Few national research, extension and training institutions are integrated. The attainment of increased agricultural production, a professed objective of all sectors, will require the building up of national systems encompassing these three functions. These systems must lead to an effective relationship between the ‘developer’ of useful technology, the ‘deliverer’ of this technology and the ‘consumer’, the farmer/smallholder. At present, however, there are still some historical, organisational and structural impediments which, together with the traditional orientation of most of the research and extension entities, make close linkages very difficult to establish. Even if serious attempts are made to create such ties, the existing constraints will, no doubt, make it difficult for them to be fully effective in the short term. National programme proposals must be designed and focused to help solve these problems.
(The writer can be contacted on treecrops@gmail.com)