Institutional reforms for getting an agricultural knowledge system to play its role in economic growth

Pakistan Development Review, Winter, 1999 by Jock R. Anderson

With the institutional and people-oriented advances described above, it is now becoming clear how AKISs might respond directly to these shortcomings. However, research, extension, and education institutions, particularly in the public sector, have been slow to exploit the potential of economic liberalisation, democratisation, and decentralisation. Market opportunities for added value, product diversification, and niche marketing, along with increased input availability, have hardly affected research and extension agendas; in addition, the social and economic sciences are still missing from many agricultural curricula. Very few extension and research institutes have been proactive in exploiting the advances in communications and information technology, for example by using them to establish links to each other, to the outside world, and to farmer organisations. Too many remain very top-down, with little room for meaningful participation by clients in guiding the direction of the programme. "Talk and chalk" remains the usual mode of teaching at institutes for agricultural education, while curricula lag behind the needs of the agricultural sector. Few agricultural education programmes have pioneered new, participatory concepts of learning and problem solving.

If AKISs stick to business as usual, support for them will be threatened. Although governments have continued allocating resources to support public agricultural research and extension programmes, many have been frustrated by the perceived failure of these programmes to alleviate the ongoing plight of poor farmers. Even if governments should indeed place priority on meeting the challenge of rural poverty, their confidence in research and extension programmes might understandably wane without clear evidence that these programmes are having a strong impact. Moreover, as public resources continue to flow and the associated opportunity costs mount, issues of accountability within these programmes will loom ever larger, ultimately threatening their support.

Building on the advances described above, AKISs can now be transformed. Despite past shortcomings, AKISs can help rural people improve their livelihoods, and it is becoming ever clearer how they can be designed to do so better. Today, through advances in agricultural technology, in rearranged public-private responsibilities, in information and communication technologies, and in concepts for participatory learning, AKISs can help the rural poor to benefit more than ever from agricultural research, extension, and education programmes. The following offers a strategic vision for what might be accomplished through AKISs, together with principles and guidelines for realising the vision.

In an ideal world, well-informed farmers would make sound decisions on their farms, well-designed AKISs would help farmers build their decision-making capacity, and key players would each play an important role in AKIS programmes. Specifically, farmers of all types would have the capacity--in terms of knowledge, skills, attitudes, information, and technologies--to run their farming businesses productively, profitably, and sustainably. An AKIS would function to (i) generate new technology; (ii) transfer technology to and from farmers, researchers, and educators; (iii) mobilise and organise rural people; and (iv) educate farmers, researchers, and extensionists. Within an AKIS, the public sector, the private sector, and civil society would each play important roles in the design, implementation, funding, and evaluation of programmes, with roles context specific and boundaries between the players changing over time.