Essay On Traditional Agricultural Extension Services

Traditional Agricultural Extension Services (AES) intended to serve smallholder farmers in Uganda and Sub-Saharan Africa at large, have yet to make a significant impact; productivity continues to dwindle, acute food insecurity and hunger continue to plague the population (Jones, 2005). This is due, in part, to the lack of knowledge-sharing practices to disseminate timely agricultural information to smallho lder farming communities that need it the most (Chapman, Slaymaker, & Young, 2002); and weak linkages between researchers, universities, extension services and farmers (Purcell and Anderson 2007; Anderson and Feder (2007). Yet, AES are crucial in supporting farmers to become more food secure by creating a linkage between farmers, research scientists and policymakers. AES are constrained further by understaffing with one Extension educator required to serve up to 400 square kilometers where 4000 farm families may live while being impeded by bad roads that are impassable during rainy seasons (Qamar 2001). Since AES were intrinsically conceived and developed to deliver information to farmers (Aker 2010); various forms of ICTs especially “traditional” ICTs like radio and newspapers have for long been integrated in agricultural extension information delivery. And more than ever, information use in agriculture in the recent past has become increasingly important for effective decision making by farming communities. This is partly due to advancements in technology and the rapidly changing agricultural systems (Opara 2008; Gallowa and Mochrie 2005; Cash 2001). The explosion of mobile phones in the recent past and their conspicuous advantages over traditional ICTs such as low cost, larger geographical coverage and ease of use (Aker and M...

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... agricultural extension services that use both the “push” and “push” approaches to provide farming tips to farmers. Majority of the services Donner describes are SMS based services; a phenomenon he attributes to the fact that SMS is widespread and relatively low cost. The other services use the internet as their main tool of information dissemination. Although “Buuza Omulimisa” leverages both text messaging and the Internet, none of the services described, provides a hybrid model where the conventional extension system is fully involved and thus allows extension officers to respond to their farmers’ local information needs in their multitude, varied local languages. They all tend to by-pass the system. Buuza Omulimisa is such system that does not only integrate the existing extension system, but also provides information to farmers their respective local languages.