Reviving agricultural extension services to bridge the last mile

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Intervention by Mr Ajay Shriram, President of the International Fertilizer Industry Association (IFA), at the Opening Session of the 78th IFA Annual Conference in Paris, France, on Tuesday, 1 June 2010.

Paris, 1 June 2010 – The last time Paris hosted the fertilizer industry was in 1946 – in a much different context. Europe had just witnessed the end of the Second World War. The twenty years that followed marked a radical transformation of French and European society, with robust economic growth and industrial development. Between 1950 and 1970, fertilizer consumption in France was multiplied by five. Since then, France has maintained its status as a leading agricultural country and is often considered the breadbasket of Europe because of its favourable agro-climatic conditions.

IIt is important to look back at such historical trends because they provide reference points for business people like us who have been influenced to think short-term. Scanning the pages of the book Fertilizers and Man, which is being released today in its English translation, I started to reflect on the amazing changes that our industry can make in entire economies. The fertilizer industry plays a determining role nowadays in keeping yields high in developed countries and closing productivity gaps in developing countries.
To return to the French example, another fact that we should not forget is the strategic role played by extension services. In that same year 1946, when IFA’s annual conference took place in Paris, the French government created the National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA). In parallel, the flourishing fertilizer companies launched new services for their customers – farmers – in order to disseminate agronomic knowledge, particularly on the best way to use fertilizer products.

2009 and its gloomy results are now behind us, so this would be a good time to focus on the fertilizer industry’s support for innovation and development in agriculture. I have a personal interest in this issue as my country, India, is home to one of the world’s largest rural populations and number of farming communities, with more than 650 million farmers. The agricultural sector represents 17.5 per cent of India’s GDP but employs 52 per cent of its labor force. Despite the importance of agriculture, extension services have not met the needs of farmers. The challenges faced by our sector include declining crop productivity gains despite increased fertilizer use, environmental problems, and the continuing use of many traditional methods (such as ignoring the nutrient balance required by the soil, and using inadequate amounts of organic material). This situation is not unique to India. It is prevalent in many middle-income and developing countries.

I consider agricultural extension to be one of the seven essential agricultural inputs. It is the vehicle for transferring knowledge, information and technology. In order for agriculture to meet societal, environmental and technological challenges, farmers must be provided with the tools they need to manage land and grow food. Agriculture is technology- and knowledge-intensive. However, most of the world’s farmers cultivate very small areas and do not have any opportunity to be trained. Knowledge and information often do not reach rural communities. Even simple information like market prices for the crops produced may not be accessible.

However, some integrated agricultural initiatives based on public-private partnerships, or what I like to refer to as “farmer-corporate partnerships”, have succeeded in addressing these problems. Building business models around farmers’ needs and constraints has been the key to their success. The design of such models has been made possible through effective dialogue between farmers’ organizations and private companies.
Based on these experiences and similar ones across the world, it would seem quite logical to initiate a unified and comprehensive plan of action to strengthen our last-mile delivery processes. I would like to suggest an eight-point approach:

1- Unifying agriculture: focusing on the crop/farmer: We need to work with farmers throughout the crop lifecycle and concentrate on crop needs, instead of each input industry focusing on its own strategy

2-Training and certifying professional crop advisors: There is a great need for the training and certification of crop specialists who can provide extension services to farmers in a much more focused manner, starting with selection of the right varieties of seeds and continuing through nutrition management, pest management, post-harvest management, etc.

3- Increasing the reach of extension services by involving agri-input dealers: The manpower currently deployed by the public and private sectors is inadequate to reach the millions of farmers worldwide. Farmers’ main point of contact for inputs and advice remains these dealers. Including dealers in the extension system and equipping them with sufficient knowledge would go a long way towards improving knowledge transfer. It might also be advisable to initiate a mandatory certification programme for all agri-input dealers, which could be renewed periodically to ensure the quality of delivery.

4-Creating a common knowledge pool: As indicated earlier, a common and coherent knowledge pool has been conspicuous by its absence due to lack of coordination among the agencies involved in agricultural extension. Moreover, the experiences of the successful extension/delivery systems of individual organizations are hardly ever shared. It could be in the interest of all concerned to establish an easily accessible common knowledge pool. Apart from providing basic agronomic information, soil maps, localized experience, etc., this pool could be utilized by certification/training agencies in educating crop advisors.

5-Leveraging information and communication technology infrastructure: Cellular phone penetration has reached unprecedented levels, even in rural areas. This provides a robust platform for providing numerous services that can supplement other efforts to deliver knowledge and information to farmers.

6-Organizing farmers: Most of the world’s farmers cultivate plots of less than two hectares and live below the poverty level. One of the first steps from subsistence to commercial farming is through farmers’ organizations.

7-Establishing farmer-corporate partnerships: In India, the corporate sector has enjoyed a long association with farming communities as an input supplier and as an output buyer. This is not the case in many other countries. A successful partnership needs to focus on educating farmers about the latest agricultural practices, ensuring quality production, and consequently helping to provide them with assured markets and better incomes.

8-Getting local: Any effective delivery system must take the need to “get local” into account and endeavour to provide knowledge and information that are localized and easily adaptable. This is particularly important in countries where regional differences are acute, with different languages, diets and agronomic practices.
Delivery of knowledge and information to the agricultural sector has to reach the last mile. Our industry possesses the tools and the attitude to develop models for this delivery. I encourage all IFA members to think about innovative strategies that we could develop. Last-mile delivery is one way to address food insecurity in many countries and to help farmers become entrepreneurs.

This year for the first time, IFA organized a workshop on “Last-Mile Delivery”. The workshop helped the fertilizer industry and its partners identify strategies to best disseminate knowledge and information to farmers, so that they can optimize benefits arising from the use of fertilizer best management practices. Fostering the adoption of best practices by small-scale farmers improves the profitability of farming, increases agricultural output to meet the requirements of the fast-growing world population, and reduces our environmental footprint as much as possible.

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For more information, please contact

Ms. Morgane Danielou, Director of Information and Communications Service IFA
Telephone: +33 1 53 93 05 33 - General: +33 1 53 93 05 00 - Fax: +33 1 53 93 05 47