FOREWORD

Agricultural extension plays a key role in raising productivity by offering technical advice, helping farmers to identify problems and opportunities, sharing information, and supporting group formation. Traditionally, extension services were provided by the state in most countries in the Asia-Pacific region. In many countries, however, they have failed to meet their objectives, for various reasons, including weak organizational structure, insufficient incentive to extension workers, poor participation of target groups, and lack of communication among researchers, policymakers, and extension workers.

Recently, some progress has been observed in extension services in the region. In some countries, services are now provided not only by government but also by the private sector and NGOs. The group approach has also gained momentum in many countries. Extension systems are becoming more broad-based by including advice to farmers on farming systems and marketing linkages while advocating demand driven and participatory extension approaches. Thus extension systems are becoming complex networks of various stakeholders, i.e., researchers, extension workers, farmers, NGOs, and departments of agriculture. The seminar on "Enhancement of Extension Systems in Agriculture" held in December 2003 in Pakistan indicated that there is a need to enhance the scope of extension and the technical capacity of extension systems to meet the challenges of coordination and communication among various stakeholders. The seminar proposed a number of strategic options for APO member countries to improve the effectiveness of their extension systems, such as: 1) establishing a national-level body to develop and implement national extension policy; 2) enhancing the mandate of extension by covering topics such as marketing, input synchronization, and the environment in addition to the transfer of agricultural technology; 3) providing ICT-based networking to all extension units/training centers/research institutions for better communication; 4) revising the extension education curriculum at university level to make it broad-based and include the most recent communication methods like teleconferencing, videoconferencing, the Internet, and call centers; and 5) using a group approach in extension and promote farmers' organizations at the grassroots level. The seminar also concluded that effective on-line communication among research and extension functions/activities and among the agencies involved would continue to be an enormous challenge.

This volume is a compilation of the papers and proceedings of the seminar. I hope that it will serve as a useful reference on agricultural extension services to those in APO member countries and elsewhere.

The APO is grateful to the Government of the Pakistan for hosting the seminar, in particular to the National Productivity Organization and University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, for implementing the program, and to the resource speakers for their valuable contributions. Special thanks are due to Dr. V.P. Sharma for editing the present volume.

Shigeo Takenaka, Secretary-General
Tokyo, March 2006