Lessons learnt from 93 years of Agricultural Extensions service in Uganda

 

To me the article in question express some kind of frustration by both the President and the authors. The issues raised in the article seem to imply that they were not consulted as the tone seem to indicate a high degree of frustration caused by the pronouncements that contradicted the NAADs principles. 

 

The most interesting part of it is the type and caliber of people that have participated in this NAADs debate and their potential to cause change in our farming community if they so wished. 

 

It all started with the President’s remark in the news print proposing to scrap NAADs and direct the money to SACCOs  I am told. 

 

So what lessons do we learn from the different phases of Uganda’s Agricultural extension as categorised by Dr and group. 

 

Between 1960-and 1962, the new government on the recommendations of the IBRD and the need to fulfil political pledges made to rural people during the 1962 elections adopted Mass extension Including input supply, loan scheme, mechanisation and group farming. 

 

Co-operative agriculture was promoted and everything was channelled through the department of agriculture. I am sure that for those who have cared including H.E the President and his advisors know that In 1964  it was recognised that the so called progressive farmers were not necessarily innovative men but rather influential who included landlords and political notables and the loan scheme had to be abandoned. 

 

It was observed that the success of mass extension depended on a professional base for creating the required techniques which led to the establishment of the department of rural economy and extension in Makerere University College. 

 

However, the supply of agricultural inputs through the ministry continued up to the early and this had a negative effect. Up to now the peasant farmers regards an extension worker as someone who provided free inputs other than a provider of useful extension advice. 

 

Extension is simply defined as the transfer of knowledge from institutions of learning to the people in the field. 

 

The aim of agricultural extension is therefore to transfer new knowledge of farming from institutions of learning to farmers in their fields where they work. 

 

Extension therefore involves the conscious use of communication of information to help people form sound opinion and make good judgment & informed decisions. 

 

The history of agricultural extension dates as back as 1873 in the USA after the civil war and other natural hazards when the land grants collages were started with the aim of producing the personnel required to transfer farming knowledge from agricultural collages in the country to farmers in their field so that they remain working as they increase production. 

 

During the 1939 war, in order to avoid starvation of its nationals which would cause them to surrender to the NAZI, Britain also had to make an effort to increase the output of farms. 

 

An organization was set up in each county known officially as the War Agricultural Executive committees of advisory. Staff was recruited in each county from those formerly employed by the universities, colleges and county councils to perform this task with their main objective as to achieve more food from more acres by a combination of persuasion and in the last resort compulsion. 

 

Their success in persuading  farmers in adopting more up-to-date farming technique was so great that the government decided that the Ministry of Agriculture should form a permanent advisory service the nucleus of which was to be from this advisory service of the war Agricultural services willing to accept appointment. 

 

Thereafter, all the countries in the world in one way or another have found it desirable as well as profitable to provide their farmers with these advisory (extension) services to enable them learn about  and the benefit  from the discoveries of science and other exponents of advanced farming systems and techniques. 

 

How does the public view extension in Uganda? 

The agricultural extension program in Uganda suffers from a very poor image in Uganda.  Lack of confidence in extension is wide spread. 

 

There is wide spread suspicion that funds that should go have  covered  operation costs of extension workers, field activities are way laid by government functionaries at the National or district levels. 

 

The task force on development of strategic frame work for agricultural  extension the, the  Plan for Modernisation of Agriculture  in Uganda had this to say “agricultural extension has reached few farmers, its messages and approaches were not effective and cost effective; there was limited access to knowledge and information to farmers; there was low adoption rate and poor accessibility of technologies due to poor delivery systems; some times the technologies being extended are in appropriate; there was inadequate linkages and co-ordination mechanisms between research, extension and the farmers need” 

 

A formal report to parliament by the committee on agriculture had this to say which appears to be a true reflection the public on agricultural extension program in the country. “As far as the committee is concerned the ministry’s extension policy is unclear, haphazard and un effective.  In fact the committee  associates itself with the general out cry by farmers and the general public country wide, including many Members of Parliament that the extension service is ineffective to the point of absence”. 

 

Not that increasing the National budget to the Agricultural sector is bad if properly focused but how does the popular argument normally raised by friends of agriculture including professional and development activists ( whom Robert Chambers refers to as rural tourist) of increasing the budget of agriculture to more 10% of the GDP trickled down to peasant farmer and translated into improved production and productivity at farm level in the real setup in the current Uganda. 

 

How has the current 4% of budget at the moment percolated downwards to benefit the ordinary person (our parents, untie, uncle or sister) in the rural area doing subsistence farming? 

 

How best can government ensure that the little that is available addresses the need of the poor before we start agitating for increasing the budget to agriculture trickle down into the farmers pocket through increased production & productivity which will translates into increased sales. 

 

How has the education system in the country benefited the peasant farmer through provision of technologies and in puts that meet the farmers requirement. 

 

How does the technologies developed by institutions of learning like an electric car  developed by Makerere university relevant to a country like Uganda where over70% of the population are in peasant farming and depend on  a hoe and a panga

 

While the developed countries had the ability to generate the advanced techniques in form of new innovations (mechanical or biological) from its advanced scientific and research activities for farmers to benefit from the agricultural extension and research, the farming community was equally literate enough and were already engaged in farming at commercial level and dealing in crops that they originally grew. 

 

Governments were also willing to invest more resources in areas that benefit the agricultural sector (research, extension, infrastructure etc) and own institutions and agricultural colleges which allowed it to acquire the skills necessary and the capacity to generate its own technologies and innovations relevant to the farming community. 

 

It is even said  that research into some of the farmers needs were financed by the farmers themselves based on their needs prevailing on the farm and that even the production of most of the farm equipment’s started as cottage industries

 

 

The conditions on research stations, with controlled environment and easy accesses to inputs have usually been close to those of resource –rich farmers. 

 

What does well on research stations can therefore do well, other things be equal with the farmer. 

 

Also the sort of farms and farm families best able to benefit ( resource-rich with good farming conditions and access to capital , inputs and markets) have been well represented. 

 

The industrial and green revolution agriculture are relatively simple in their farming systems ,often with large field and mono-cropping, uniform in their environment and low risks. 

 

In contrast the third world agriculture is characterized as complex in its farming systems, diverse in its environments and risk prone. 

 

The physical, social and economic conditions of the resource agriculture differ from those of research stations, simple and high input packages do not fit in well with the small scale complexity and diversity of their farming systems. 

 

Farm families often lack reliable access to purchased inputs and therefore need to use them sparingly if at all in the face of risks, the farming community is mainly the illiterate who produce food mainly for their household survival and feel they are condemned to the land but not to farm as a business. 

 

The agricultural prices are never good enough to provide incentives for adaptation of better farming methods to improve their production and productivity using purchased inputs. 

 

In industrial and green revolution agriculture, high production came from intensification of inputs and simplification of practices while in third country agriculture it comes from diversification of enterprises and multiplying linkages.  

 

Though Agriculture contributes around 42% of the Uganda GDP, 85% of the country’s export and employs over 80% of the country population. 

 

However, only 32% of the land suitable for cultivation is currently farmed. Cultivated land per person actively employed in agriculture has actually fallen by 29% over the same period yet crop yields have remained virtually unchanged or even decreased despite increase in the intensity of the labour land ratio. 

 

There is a very big gap between the yield obtainable from these high yielding varieties at the research stations and that obtained at the farmers field. I at one time engaged in a discussion with my fellow agricultural economist who felt that it was okay for  NARO to develop  technologies that remain on the shelf. 

 

 

That even when farmers don’t adopt these technologies, it will be the farmers fault as NARO will have done their work. But Imagine  a trader going in to trade in commodities he knows they won’t sell or an industrialist going in to produce commodities that are not on demand in  the market such a person would naïve or  insane. 

 

In  resource-rich industrial countries,  production has been raised through packages where the environment management is controlled to fit the genotype but in the third world where agriculture is complex diverse and risk prone, it requires a search for genotype that fit the environment. 

 

With the current technology available such as genetic engineering why can’t efforts be focused to assisting  the farmer to raise the yield from 17 - 33 per cent of what is obtained at the research station to about 65% within his normal working environment. According the Ministry of Agriculture reports, it is possible for a farmer to double yields for most crops within the existing stock of knowledge.