Agricultural extension coverage under different management systems

Abstract

In developing countries, small scale farmers make substantial contribution to the national economies. It seems that in numbers they tend to increase, although they claim for a small percentage of cultivated extent. Further, in many instances, they distributed in a wide area so that often rural development programmes were confronted with the problem of reaching them. Today, we regard agricultural extension as one of the key instruments used in rural development programmes. However, it is evident that past extension approaches have shown a tendency to deal with small number of farmers and often, small scale farmers were not reached. Hence, extension coverage was rather limited to a small percentage of farmers but not to the vast majority. This environment warranted new extension strategies, modifications to the existing systems and also urged governments to take policy measures to secure the status of small farmers, at least to sustain them. Since mid-seventies, the well known Training and Visit (T&V) System of Agricultural Extension was introduced to many developing countries to overcome the problems identified in extension organizations. Specifically, it aims to extend the extension coverage to a wider clientele. The Sri Lankan agricultural framework was re-oriented according to the guideline of the T&V extension management system in late seventies after implementing the 'system on a pilot scale in a dry zone district. However, with the recent introduction of decentralized Provincial Council (PC) System in the country, the single line of 60 command deployed by the T&V management was affected as the front line Village Extension Workers (VEWs) were moved from the Department of Agriculture to the administrative purview of the local government authorities. Exploring the field situations under T&V management system and present system, this paper attempts to highlight some facts concerning the status of small farmer with respect to extension coverage. The findings imply that frequency of farmer contacts on agricultural activities by the field officers has drastically declined during the reference period limiting the extension coverage. Therefore, there is an urgent need to reconsider the issues which affected the agricultural extension system after the introduction of recent reform