Obert Chifamba Agri-Insight
IT all started with nine agricultural demonstration workers in 1927. This was followed by the establishment of the Department of Conservation and Extension (Conex) and the Department of Agricultural Development.

Conex was mandated to provide advisory services to white large-scale commercial farmers while the Department of Agricultural Development served indigenous smallholder farmers.

In 1980 this arrangement was changed as the two merged to form the Department of Agricultural, Technical and Extension Services (Agritex).

Of course, the new department had its own teething problems given that two different streams of institutional memory were merging, which resulted in loss of critical technical information, especially in dealing with commercial farming.

The arrival of new staff slowed down things. Agritex was an offspring of two organisations with different philosophies and experiences in dealing with farmers from different socio-economic backgrounds hence much of the first years were spent experimenting and establishing itself as a service for all farmers, especially smallholder farmers.

Throughout the 1960s and most of the 1970s, Agritex used the group development area approach in which a large number of group development areas (GDAs) were established in Mashonaland East Province, particularly in Murehwa and Mutoko districts.

The approach was based on area and project development through community participation in which, in some cases, the local people provided labour while government or donors provided the necessary inputs.

This concept allowed the extension services to penetrate difficult areas and introduce agricultural extension technology, making it easier to introduce other development initiatives closely related to agriculture.

This approach was, however, difficult to use in taking services to the needy, focusing on a particular individual or group as it could unintentionally sideline some deserving farmers and relied heavily on government and donors, which left projects vulnerable in the event of government deficit or donor weariness.

In the 1930s, Agritex introduced the master farmer training scheme to develop competent farmers.

This approach sought to spread modern, scientific farming techniques in communal areas with master farmer certificates and badges being awarded to communal farmers who adopted and practised improved methods. The approach was based on what was known as the “trickle-down” theory of extension, in which a few progressive farmers received extension and information, which they were expected to pass on to other farmers through farmer-to-farmer dissemination and demonstration.

At independence it was upgraded to include an Advanced Master Farmer Training Programme, which was seen as focusing on better-off farmers, sidelining the bulk of communal farmers and reinforcing existing income differentials among social groups.

The radio listening group (RLG) approach was tried in Chimhanda and Nswazi communal areas.

It involved gathering farmers together in groups to listen to radio programmes that address either specific geographic areas or the whole nation, depending on the heterogeneity of the farming regions.

The farmer groups then discuss the extension issues raised in the programmes and help each other understand them.

There was also the training and visit system — an extension management system that was developed in 1977 and sought to upgrade the technical content of field extension activities, while making agents’ activities more predictable — and thus more accessible to farmers.

The idea was to increase the effectiveness of agricultural extension services through comprehensively structured training, delivery and administrative systems.

In Zimbabwe, the system was modified to use extension groups instead of contact farmers. This system has since proved to be an excellent extension management system in irrigation projects, which follow strict timetables, but has limited success in dryland farming.

In the Midlands and Mashonaland West provinces, it contributed to increased cash crop production by smallholder farmers.

The farming systems research and extension methodology was developed as a direct response to the failure of various prescriptive agricultural development models and the realisation that many recommended technologies, although technically sound, were not relevant to the objectives and socio-economic circumstances of smallholder farmers or were inappropriate to the agro-ecological conditions.

This one was centred on problem solving and is systems-oriented, interdisciplinary, farmer-oriented and iterative. It has largely been championed by the Farming Systems Research Unit within the Department of Research and Specialist Services, while Agritex has been more active at the grassroots level where extension workers identify trial farmers and monitor on-farm trials.

The commodity-based approach is generally organised through parastatal organisations or private firms and is very important for cash crops or export crops.

In Zimbabwe, the major cash crops are tobacco, cotton, sugar cane and a diversity of horticultural commodities.

Cotton production, for instance, has been greatly helped by a crop research programme supported by effective commodity-based extension.

Smallholder farmer participation in sugar cane production has risen as a result of the commodity-based approach in which private companies offer extension and processing facilities.

In horticulture, the approach has been widely used to establish out-grower schemes and provide research, extension and input credit services to interested farmers.

The approach, however, tends to focus more on one crop, sometimes at the expense of a local area’s specific needs.

Furthermore, it retains characteristics of the conventional top-down extension approach, which does not give freedom to farmers and stifles their initiatives.

Agritex’s achievements in recent years include: increased production of crops such as maize, tobacco and cotton by communal farmers; national development through participation in the initiation of rural development projects and restored confidence in professional and technical extension services.

Agritex has also countered the damage caused by loss of experienced personnel by embarking on a staff development programme, which has strengthened its professional image.

In rural areas, the agricultural extension system provides more than extension.

It has also played a major role in rural people’s development efforts through rural development projects that are planned, initiated and facilitated by its staff, which has been one of the department’s most                                                                                          significant achievements since independence.

Agritex has been associated with a number of relatively new agricultural extension approaches that include: participatory extension approaches, participatory learning approaches, participatory rural appraisals, rapid rural appraisals, participatory technology development, farmer field schools, innovative farmer workshops, and look-and-learn tours.

In other new and emerging extension approaches — farmer-first, farmer-back-to-farmer, farmer-to-farmer extension and facilitation — extension agents respond to farmers’ requests and programmes and visit farmers only when required.

Such bottom-up approaches have enabled farmers to take the initiative, make decisions and choose among different service providers, based on an organisation’s ability to deliver appropriate services.

Agritex has also been experimenting with project-based extension, in which a group of farmers work on a project, such as pig production, while learning the production aspects that will allow them to implement that project on their own.

Although Agritex and some of its innovative agricultural extension agents have already began experimenting with some of these new approaches, they are still in their trial stages and have not yet been fully adopted at the operational level.