Communication for Facilitating Participatory Extension: A Case of East Java Region in Indonesia

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This study assessed the public extension agents’ responses to participatory extension approach. Since the independence in 1945, Indonesia’s extension agency has been providing services to farmers to enter the core of development. The government has enacted the Law Number 16/2006 on Participatory Extension as a consequence of political decentralization in the country by the year 2000. In principle, the new law mandates a change from a top-down to bottom-up approach. The law gives missions that extension system should not only “productive, effective, and efficient,” but also “decentralized, participatory, transparent, self-initiative, equitable in partnership… and accountable”. The new law urges extension is a learning process for farmers and business communities and ready to organize themselves and capable to access to information, technology, capital and other resources to drive up productivity and prosperity in concord with environmental sustainability.
As a consequence, the agents must act as a facilitator, rather than agents of technological transfer. The research question is whether the new approach is working, and what types of potential barriers in implementing the approach? This study focused on three aspects, namely the participation of farmers, stakeholder partnership, and access to contemporary agri-rural development, as seen by the public extension agents.The objectives of the study were: 1) to describe the characteristics of extension agents in Malang Regency; 2) to examine the implementation of participatory extension as a new approach from the perspectives of the agents; 3) to examine the challenges faced by the agents in implementing the new approach; 4) to describe their training needs in implementing the new app...

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...one in the absence of inter-agency network.
As a consequence, public extension agents were not ready to implement the participatory extension approach. For this reason, extension management and policy makers need to consider the following recommendations and strategies to deal with it. Capacity building is vital to improve the knowledge and skills of the agents. In addition, it is recommended to integrate communication for development (C4D) framework to deal with the complexity of participatory extension. The framework is accomplished by inserting special agents of the C4D to back up the public extension agents, as well as increase the ICT (information and communication technology) facilities to improve extension service. Other recommendations are also given with regard to demographic and practical considerations, and further complementary researches are identified.

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