Extension services key to food security

NAIROBI: Agriculture is one of the key pillars of Vision 2030 and was captured prominently in the Jubilee Coalition's manifesto in the run-up to last year's election.

The Vision 2030 stipulates that Kenya will raise incomes from agriculture through innovative, commercially-oriented and modern agricultural farming methods. Among the requirements for this achievement is increased smallholder specialisation.

In the Strategy for Revitalising Agriculture 2004-2014, a recent policy being implemented by the Government, reform of the extension service systems to create a more effective linkage between research, extension and the farmers should be prioritised.

The extension services should be analysed afresh to find out how effective they are.

This in essence implies that extension services are not up to scratch.

Investing and supporting small-scale farmers is fundamental to poverty reduction and improving food security in our country.

It is estimated that about 70 per cent of our population comprises rural people who live on less than a dollar a day and majority are small-scale farmers.

It is evident that agricultural extension plays a vital role in sharing new technologies, latest farming techniques and linking farmers to other stakeholders in the economy.

Information on new and existing livestock policies is disseminated through the extension services.

These services are therefore a critical change agent for farmers and an important ingredient in promoting food security, improving incomes and poverty reduction.

Extension services were very good in the 1980s and 1990s as the Government had invested fully in them.

Currently, the extension information services are wanting due to challenges such as lack of adequate personnel, inadequate funding, lack of proper coordination between research and extension and poor dissemination of information.

In addition, tasks and responsibilities of extension workers need to be broad-based and holistic in content and scope, and should go beyond technology transfer. The Ministry of agriculture should also employ more extension staff.

The extension personnel should be stationed closer to the farmers and targets set that they must meet.

It is evident that currently, some extension workers mainly target the most established farmers and leave out the smallholder farmers. They should attend to all farmers equally.

They should present the messages clearly to farmers and the information needs to be packaged in a way that is easy for the farmer to understand.

Furthermore the messages should be translated to vernacular languages to enable illiterate farmers to understand.

Due to lack of adequate extension officers on the ground, it is my opinion that a mixture of channels should be used for the information to be understood easily.

It is evident that agricultural shows and field days are popular with farmers as means of getting information and therefore it should be made more effective.

The use of mass media should be incorporated so that more farmers receive agricultural information, vernacular radio stations should be encouraged because majority of smallholder farmers are not literate enough to understand English and Kiswahili.

There is also need to improve Farmers Training Centres, which are very important for training farmers and extension staff.

At the moment most of the FTCs are in a state of disuse. Some have even been converted to universities.

There is need for more of such training centres to be established. The national and county governments should establish at least one in every county.