Purpose – 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...

As part of a review of changing patterns of variability in cereal production around the world, the situation in Australia is examined both by major cereal crops and by State in which they are grown. The Australian results are generally consistent with those found in parts of both the industrial...

In view of the market failures and the state failures inherent in providing agricultural extension, community-based approaches, which involve farmers‘ groups, have gained increasing importance in recent years as a third way to provide this service. The paper discusses the conceptual...

The authors analyze the considerations that lead policymakers to undertake extension investments as a key public responsibility, as well as the complex set of factors and intra-agency incentives that explain why different extension systems'performance vary. The authors provide a conceptual...

In this chapter we analyze the considerations that lead policy makers to undertake extension investments as a key public responsibility, as well as the complex set of factors and intra-agency incentives that explain why different extension systems' performance varies. Accordingly, the chapter...

This paper uses a simulation model to measure the size of the social welfare gains from price stabilisation within the general setting of a non-linear, multiplicative risk and lagged expectations model of the market. The size of the gains is found to be relatively small when producers plan on...

The paper reviews the origins and evolution of the Training and Visit (T&V) extension system, which was promoted by the World Bank in 1975-98 in over 50 developing countries. The discussion seeks to clarify the context within which the approach was implemented, and to analyze the causes for its...