Training and visit extension in practice. Edited by John Howell Overseas Development Institute, Agricultural Administration Unit, Occasional Paper 8, London, 1988, 107pp
| Published date | 01 April 1990 |
| Author | M. Moore |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230100216 |
| Date | 01 April 1990 |
Book
reviews
247
of
the state’. Barlow’s paper appears to stand for rock-like professionalism, supporting the
rulers even if they are corrupt
or
inept.
With hindsight, the true challenge
of
the 1980s seems to have been missed. That is the need for
glasnost,
including some whistle-blowing systems, to reveal and measure the benefits and costs
of the state as a whole, coupled with vigorous reform to give effect to the adjustments thereby
revealed to be necessary.
MICHAEL
YAFFEY
Development
&
Project Planning Centre,
University
of
Bradford
TRAINING AND VISIT EXTENSION IN PRACTICE
Edited
by
John
Howell
Overseas Development Institute, Agricultural Administration Unit, Occasional Paper
8,
London, 1988, 107pp.
The title
of
this mini-book is a little misleading
in
a way that was perhaps intentional.
One expects a continuation
of
the long controversy over the virtues and vices
of
the
Training and Visit [T &V] agricultural extension system which has become very closely
associated with the World Bank. There are certainly some echoes
of
that controversy
here. A World Bank group summarizes its research which is claimed to demonstrate
that T&V has done pretty well in North India (where it all started), and has generated
substantial economic returns. Case studies
of
the impact
of
T&V in Somalia (by Nick
Chapman) and Zambia (by Alistair Sutherland) find a great deal in its favour, while at
the same time questioning the local appropriateness of all elements
of
the T&V model.
Yet overall the style is not at all confrontational. What the editor has tried (and
succeeded) in doing is to get a few good people
to
think hard and write in a succinct
fashion about the main current agricultural extension issues in the context of the
introduction of T&V. He tries to bury those T&V-related controversies which he sees as
no
longer fruitful. For example, we are told that
it
is no use agonizing further over the
wisdom
of
the T&V injunction that extension agents concentrate on ‘pure’ knowledge
transfer and cease to handle physical agricultural inputs. For there is no real possibility
of
implementing this injunction, and attempts to do
so
have failed (p. 91). The focus is
rather
on
the future. In the light
of
the fact that considerable investments have been
made in extension in the name
of
T&V, what considerations should be borne in mind
in designing and adapting local extension systems? The original T&V notion
of
a
standard blueprint is quietly but firmly rejected; diversity rules. T&V is given credit for
re-awakening interest in extension and bringing to the front
of
the agenda such issues as
staff management systems and the multiple roles
of
field extension agents.
What this book really provides is food for thought: a neat collection
of
well-written
papers by practical extensionists which illustrate the diversity
of
issues in extension and
the range
of
experiences. The most stimulating nourishment is provided by Derek
Byerlee, who argues that even Third World farmers are now facing a complex
technological and economic environment in which a few simple extension messages,
h
la
T&V, are no longer appropriate. The role
of
the extension system should be closer to
that of the formal education system: to prepare, train and support farmers to make their
own decisions in a complex environment.
The collection originated in a seminar series at the Overseas Development Institute.
Would that all seminar series were
so
productive! And would also that all subject
specialists were
so
enlightened!
For
the editor raises and takes seriously the concerns
of
many agricultural development specialists outside extension circles that investments in
extension in much
of
the Third World have yielded little return, and are unlikely to do
so
in some regions, [especially in sub-Saharan Africa], until the research systems can be
repaired sufficiently
to
give the extension agents something to extend.
M.
MOORE
Institute
of
Development Studies at the University
of
Sussex
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