EXTENSION AND RURAL ADVISORY SERVICES

Takeaways from the recent knowledge event on the future of extension and rural advisory services convened by PIM and Feed the Future Developing Local Extension Capacity (DLEC) project.

What do youth have to do with agriculture or agricultural extension? Aren’t most young people trying to get out of rural areas and are not interested in agriculture?

Researchers and development practitioners don’t often team up to co-lead large global projects. There are reasons this type of partnership isn’t very common, yet we each need the other to be able to solve seemingly intractable global problems like hunger and poverty.

In Nepal, bureaucrats’ local knowledge and motivation make a difference in serving rural farmers. Danielle Resnick and Jordan Kyle share recent research findings on agricultural extension service provision from Nepal.

The new paper examines how subnational variation in capacity affects access to agricultural extension in rural Nepal, finding that even when resources are scarce, knowledgeable and motivated bureaucrats can deliver surprisingly high levels of services.