Old Images and New Challenges: Rethinking the Mission of Agricultural Support Systems in Asia

To speak of rethinking the mission of the agricultural support system is no easy task. It has already played crucial roles in Asia’s recent agricultural development. This paper is designed to determine the challenges to sustainable development and what poverty alleviation might mean for the mission of agricultural research and extension. It focuses on limited-resource farmers and on the crucial distinction between agricultural support as a transfer and as a transformational process.