Harnessing scientific innovation and technology in agriculture and nutrition is critical to meeting the global challenges of producing more food with less land and water, reducing stunting in children and helping farmers to adapt to climate change. Any new technology is only as good as our ability to get it into the hands of the millions of small holder farmers who are the foundation of agriculture-based economic growth.
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Agricultural Extension professionals and organizations are working towards meeting these challenges, through identification of available best technologies that can improve the lives of smallholder farmers and employing effective strategies of accelerating their dissemination and adoption on a wide scale.
This article introduces the subjects and highlights some of the principles and strategies gaining popularity, with examples of how they are being employed by various actors in the extension landscape, in up-scaling technology diffusion and adoption in order to achieve food security.
In this light, we will discover that Agricultural Extension is defined broadly to include:-
1. All the system that facilitate access of farmers, their organizations and other market actors to knowledge, information and technologies. 2. Facilitate their interaction with partners in research, education, agri-business, and other relevant institutions. 3. To assist them develop their own technical, organizational and management skills and practices.
Extension is therefore described as a system of out-of-school education for rural people. It is said to be a service or system, by which farmers are offered help through educational procedures, in improving farming methods and techniques, increasing production efficiency and income, bettering their standard of living and lifting social and educational standards.
Agricultural Extension assists farmers to identify and analyse their production problems and become aware of the opportunities for improvement.
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More so, it’s said that an Extension worker seeks out and encourages people to change their traditional attitudes towards development, and help them achieve a better standard of living.
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