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There is growing interest from the global development community in the role of agricultural research and extension (AR & E) systems to achieve development targets. Despite this interest, many smallholders in developing countries continue to lack access to updated agricultural information and reliable services. In an effort to increase the effectiveness, impact, and reach of AR & E programs, many governments have attempted to reform their national systems. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper systematically compares the systems and reforms of AR & E in China and India in order to draw out lessons applicable to developing countries. This paper first reviews the existing literature on AR & E systems and their role in agricultural and economic development. The authors then provide a detailed review and comparative analysis of the reforms and approaches implemented in the AR & E systems of China and India. The authors apply this comparative analysis to draw out lessons that can be applied to inform the reformation of AR & E systems in developing countries.

The authors find that although both countries face similar agricultural development challenges, each took a different approach in the reformation of AR & E to address these challenges. Each country’s approaches had different impacts on the effectiveness of the system. Lessons from the reformation of the AR & E systems in China and India can be used to inform and improve the impact of AR & E in developing countries.

The paper examines two systems together using a set of common indicators and factors. The paper’s value comes from its usefulness in informing future AR & E reforms in other developing countries in order to increase the impact of these reforms on development outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of agricultural extension services provided by public sector on the individual technology adoption behaviour of rice farmers in Sri Lanka.

The study used data from a cross sectional survey conducted in seven rice procuring regions in Sri Lanka. Eight rice technologies were selected to explore the effect of extension service on adoption behaviour of rice farmers using probit models. The extension service variable was identified as potentially endogeneous and instrumented using average extension for each region.

The results revealed that the extension service variable was positive and indicative of a high level of significance in all the rice technologies promoting the adoption. Hence the public agricultural extension service programmes were considered as significant explanators of technology adoption. The farmers who received agricultural extension service were more likely to adopt a technology.

At present, the position of agricultural extension service is questioned and the future is unknown. Therefore, this study advises policy makers to prioritise agricultural policies to strengthen public spending on agricultural extension for effective adoption of technological innovations.

The paper adds solid empirical evidence to the literature on technology adoption behaviour from a peasant agricultural context in a developing country scenario that uses farm level data. Moreover, the study contributes to the literature by reiterating the significance of public provision of extension and training programmes as a direct motive in the technology adoption behaviour of farmers.

Northern Vietnam is a mountainous area where most farmers' livelihoods depend on maize production. Beside training in farming techniques, since 2013 extension courses on market access have been gradually delivered to maize farmers to help them save production costs and increase earnings.

By applying robust regression and Tobit models to estimate technical efficiency (TE), the difference-in-difference (DID) technique is used in this study to determine the change in the TE of 1,035 farmers in the period 2013–2015 in Northern Vietnam.

The DID estimator indicated the initial success of extension courses by showing a faster increase in the TE of the receivers compared to that of non-receivers. However, co-operation in production and marketing by maize farmers and access to micro-credit resulted in an insignificant impact on the TE of maize farmers in 2015. These low impact results highlighted the inefficiency of the extension and micro-credit programmes and that raised the concern of policymakers. The distance to local market signifies the determination of farmers on their crops affected by how close their location to their input/output marketplaces.

The Land Policy of the government should take into careful consideration measures to exploit all potential production and to mitigate poverty as well as foster the development of the region.

The expansion of extension courses on access to market has been recognised as an effective method to increase farmer's efficiency.

Smallholder farmers often deal with lack of information and knowledge, weak financial capacity and limited collaboration and network orientation. This is hampering their ability to adopt or co-develop innovation, and to participate in value chain exchanges. This calls for using intermediary organizations. The purpose of this paper is to understand how innovation intermediaries engage with smallholder farmers and provoke value chain reconfigurations.

The authors systematically review literature to draw cases on intermediaries operating in the agri-food sector in several geographical and socio-economic contexts. The authors then adopt a theory building from cases approach to identify relationships between smallholder farmers and innovation intermediaries, and their effects in the reconfiguration of value chains.

Consultants, knowledge transfer organizations (KTOs) and broker organizations (BOs) are the three typologies of intermediaries identified. While consultants facilitate change by modifying the way smallholders engage in transactions with their buyers and input providers, KTOs focus on farmers engagement in the value chain by stimulating the formation of knowledge platform or partnership. BOs operate in a similar way as compared to KTOs but mainly by forming and facilitating access to informal networks.

The authors build a framework in which relationships between typologies of intermediary organizations and types of innovation processes are connected with changes at value chain level.

The authors highlight how diverse forms of intermediations may stimulate not only smallholder farmers’ participation in innovation networks but also value chain reconfigurations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the purposes and current outcomes of Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree program in Austria. It identifies the ability of higher agricultural education (HAE) curriculum to meet its purpose by way of validating its current outcomes.

The study used survey research design to purposively sample faculty members and graduating students under the bachelor degree program of Agricultural Science at BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. In addition to a self-administered questionnaire, key informant interviews were also conducted to validate the data gathered.

The Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree program in Austria aims to develop the student scientific understanding of theoretical and practical aspects of agriculture. The program also gears toward developing their lifelong learning skills. Analysis of the difference reveals congruence in the perceptions of agricultural education professionals and students regarding the intended and expected learning outcomes of the HAE curriculum. The findings affirm how the purposes and outcomes of HAE curriculum have been met successfully and their implications to BS Agriculture curriculum in the University of the Philippines. The findings are grounded on the firm foundations of Austrian higher education system from their strategic curriculum planning, design, and implementation to evaluation where all stages are done in consultation with the various stakeholders. Truly a community of dedicated members of the academic and administrative staff is a powerful tool toward curricular advancement in HAE institutions.

The subject of this study, in particular BOKU University, provides a concrete example that not only the University of the Philippines Los Baños but all the other agricultural universities around the world could learn from.

This study serves as a springboard for the development of new and innovative models of curriculum and instruction in the Philippines and other agricultural developing countries in the world.

This is an original study that provides discussion on the link between a developed country as a possible model and a developing country in terms of HAE. It helps the HAE institutions realize the ways on how their educational aspirations will turn into reality when it comes to fulfilling their role in supplying a well-trained and productive workforce for the agricultural economy toward sustainable agriculture development in one’s own country.

The poor performance of public agricultural extension systems in developing countries engendered interest in pluralistic concepts of extension involving a variety of service providers. Within the reform agenda, modalities relying on private‐sector providers were perceived as a path to improvement. This paper aims to assess the potential and limitations of such modalities.

The paper discusses the conceptual underpinnings of these extension approaches, highlights theoretical and practical challenges inherent in their design, and provides an assessment of several performance‐based case studies described in the formal and informal literature.

Many of the modalities reviewed entail partnerships between the public sector, farmers' organizations or communities, and private‐sector providers. The paper concludes that while private‐sector participation can overcome some of the deficiencies of public extension systems, there are also challenges that have been faced, including misuse of public funds, insufficient accountability to farmers, inequitable provision of service, inadequate quality, and limited coverage of the wide range of farmers' needs.

The review suggests that private‐sector involvement in extension is no panacea. Extension systems need not be uniform, and will require different providers for different clienteles, with public providers and funding focusing more on smaller‐scale and less commercial farmers. The public sector may need to provide some regulatory oversight of private‐sector extension activities, particularly when public funding is involved.

The paper draws conclusions from a diverse range of experiences, some of which are recent, and provides comparative insights. It may be of interest to development scholars and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of public investment in agricultural R&D and extension on broadacre farming productivity in Australia.

An autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) regression model is applied to estimate the effects of public investment in agricultural R&D and extension on Australian braodacre productivity.

The study reveals that public investment in agricultural R&D and extension has contributed almost two-thirds of average annual broadacre productivity growth between 1952-1953 and 2006-2007, the average internal rate of return to public investment in agricultural R&D and extension was 28.4 and 47.5 per cent a year, respectively, and overseas spill-ins is an important source of domestic agricultural productivity growth.

Policy implications: the findings suggest that increasing public investment in agricultural R&D and extension and maintaining agricultural R&D policy stability are equally important to have a sustained long-term agricultural productivity growth, and maintaining an open trade and investment regime is important to benefit from foreign knowledge spillovers which is especially important for developing countries.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by employing more sophisticated econometric techniques with an extended data set for the period from 1952-1953 to 2006-2007. The study separates the contribution of public R&D investment and the extension investment, and also takes into account the contribution of overseas public investment on the TFP growth in the Australian broadacre sector.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate perceptions of smallholder farmers toward the cost-sharing agricultural extension service provision.

The study used data from a cross-sectional survey, key informants interviews and focused group discussions conducted on 384 farm households from six Kebeles of Eastern Ethiopia.

The authors find that flexibility and credibility, ability of development agents to address neglected aspects in agricultural production, and reaching diversified groups of farmers as the perceived advantages of the cost-sharing approach. Furthermore, improved knowledge and attitude, enhanced research–extension–farmer linkages, and improved food security and poverty reduction are found to be the three most important impact areas associated with the approach. On the contrary, poor economic status of farmers, high cost of administration and absence of a clear guideline/legislation are found to be the most important constraints. The authors find that increasing farmers’ awareness about the cost-sharing approach and preparing a clear definition of the form, modalities and principles of the cost-sharing extension approach can be a part of the practical solutions to overcome the challenges.

The current research is limited to the investigation of farmers’ perceptions toward paid extension services. The willingness to pay for extension services – using discrete choice experiments – is dealt with in another paper.

The first of its kind in the country, the paper tried to assess farmers’ readiness to try a new extension service delivery. The findings have important implications for policy makers and local level implementers of extension programs.

Low-carbon agricultural technology (LAT) extension is a key strategy for the agricultural sector to address climate change. Social capital, which consists of social networks, trust and norms, can play an active LAT extension role. This paper aims to analyze the mechanism of the role of social capital in the process of LAT extension.

Questionnaire data from six counties in Jiangsu, China, were used to measure social capital and analyze its effect on LAT extension using logistic regression. Data from 27 interviews were used to analyze the LAT extension experiences and problems.

LAT is mainly deployed by the government to farmers and distributed among them. In this process, the village officials who form parts of the government’s composition and the villagers play a dual role that facilitates a close link between them and the farmers and ensures LAT integration. However, social norms did not play a significant role in the process.

Farmers’ acceptance of LAT is based solely on the trade-off between local networks’ benefits and trust in local villagers and village officials. LAT-related laws and technical measures, thus are essential to strengthen LAT practices’ authority and incorporate LAT-based agricultural production as the norm of production behavior.

This paper provides an insight into the process and essence of farmers’ acceptance of LAT, which provides theoretical lessons for the LAT extension in China and indeed other developing countries.

We consider the relationship between external aid and development in Mozambique from 1980–2004, identifying the specific mechanisms through which aid has influenced the developmental trajectory of the country. We undertake both a growth accounting analysis and review the intended and unintended effects of aid at the micro-level. Sustained aid flows to Mozambique, in conflict and post-conflict periods, have made an unambiguous, positive contribution to rapid growth since 1992. However, proliferation of donors and aid-supported interventions has burdened local administration, indicating a need for deeper domestic government accountability. To sustain growth, Mozambique must maximize benefits from natural resources while promoting constructive international market integration.