The role of non-governmental organizations in extension

The role of non-governmental organizations in extension

In recent years, many observers have suggested that agricultural and rural development strategies would benefit from increased collaboration between government research and extension organizations and nongovernmental development organizations, hereafter called GOs and NGOs, respectively (Can-oil, 1992; de Janvry et al., 1989; Jordan, 1989; Korten, 1987). Donors in particular have begun to call for more NGO involvement in programmes that have traditionally been implemented through the public sector, and there has been a recent upsurge of donor interest in direct-funding south-based NGOs (World Bank, 1991a, 1991b; Farnworth, 1991; Bebbington & Riddell, 1994).

These advocates of closer NGO-GO collaboration have tended to underemphasize:
• The wide range of interaction that currently exists, not all of it collaborative; much involves pressure by one side or the other.
• The limitations facing efforts to work together.
• The preconditions for successful collaboration; in particular, the prior informal contacts necessary to build up mutual trust.
• Limitations as well as successes of NGO action.
• The extent to which certain functions relating to, for example, "public goods" will remain more cost-effectively performed by the public sector than by NGOs.

Analysis of how GOs might work with NGOs must be accompanied by continuing attention to ways of improving public sector management, an area in which structural adjustment reforms have not had the success expected.

This chapter draws on a recent major study of the role of NGOs in sustainable agricultural development and the potential for collaborative links with GOs (Farrington & Bebbington, 1993; Bebbington & Thiele, 1993; Farrington & Lewis, 1993; Wellard & Copestake, 1993). The following will be reviewed: the characteristics of NGOs, their strengths and weaknesses in relation to agricultural technology, and the practical ways in which they and public sector extension services might collaborate more fully in the future.


NGO characteristics
NGOs are defined here as nonmembership development-oriented organizations. Our concern here is with the stronger of the south-based NGOs that provide services either directly to the rural poor or to grass-roots membership organizations, and with the local branches of international NGOs that enjoy varying degrees of autonomy. They are therefore distinct from (but, as discussed below, often linked with) formal and informal membership organizations such as farmers' associations. But even within this definition, there exists wide diversity of origins and philosophy. Some NGOs were set up by left-leaning professionals or academics in opposition to the politics of government or its support for or indifference to the prevailing patterns of corruption, patronage, or authoritarianism. Some are based on religious principles, others on a broadly humanitarian ethos, and yet others were set up as quasi-consultancy concerns in response to recent donor-funding initiatives. Some NGOs reject existing social and political structures and see themselves as engines for radical change; others focus on more gradual change through development of human resources (usually through group formation) to meet their own needs or to make claims on government services; yet others focus more simply on the provision of services (e.g., advice, input supply) largely within existing structures. Their ideological orientations also differ widely in relation to agricultural technology: many are concerned with low external input agriculture, 1 others pursue fundamentally organic approaches, 2 and, especially in the case of Andean societies, some are concerned to strengthen or reinstate traditional agricultural practices which formed the basis of social organization (CAAP, 1991).
Of crucial importance when considering NGO-GO links is that NGOs are independent: they are not mandated to collaborate with research and extension services in the way that government departments might be. They will therefore collaborate only if GOs have something useful to offer.

NGO Strengths
• The majority of NGOs are small and horizontally structured with short lines of communication and are therefore capable of responding flexibly and rapidly to clients' needs and to changing circumstances. They are also characterized by a work ethic conducive to generating sustainable processes and impacts.
• NGOs' concern with the rural poor means that they often maintain a field presence in remote locations, where it is difficult to keep government staff in post.
• One of NGOs' main concerns has been to identify the needs of the rural poor in sustainable agricultural development. They have therefore pioneered a wide range of participatory methods for diagnosis3 and, in some contexts, have developed and introduced systems approaches for testing new technology, for example in Chile (Sotomayor, 1991). In some cases, these approaches have extended beyond fanning systems into processing and marketing, as with soya in Bangladesh (Buckland & Graham, 1990), sesame in the Gambia (Gilbert, 1990), and cocoa in Bolivia (Trujillo, 1991).
• NGOs' rapport with farmers has allowed them to draw on local knowledge systems in the design of technology options and to strengthen such systems by ensuring that the technologies developed are reintegrated into them (Chaguma & Gumbo, 1993).
• NGOs have also developed innovative dissemination methods, relying on farmer-to-farmer contact, whether on a group or individual basis (e.g., Sollows, Thongpan, & Leelapatra, 1993).
• In some cases, NGOs have developed new technologies such as soya production in Bangladesh (Buckland & Graham, 1990) or management practices such as the sloping agricultural land technology in the Philippines (Watson & Laquihon, 1993), but more often they have sought to adapt existing technologies, such as PRADAN's efforts in India to scale down technologies developed by government for mushroom and raw silk production and so make them accessible to small-scale farmers (Vasimalai, 1993).
• Undoubtedly, one of the main strengths of NGOs has been their work in group formation. This has been in response to perceived needs at several levels: (1) To meet the technical requirements of certain types of innovation. Thus, Action for World Solidarity in India worked with grass-roots organizations to achieve simultaneous action in an integrated pest management programme (Satish & Vardhan, 1993). In the Gambia and Ethiopia, NGOs helped farmers to organize local informal seed production in ways to avoid undesirable cross-pollination (Henderson & Singh, 1990). (2) To manage "lumpy" assets. In Bangladesh, NGOs have helped to organize landless labourers to acquire and operate water-pumping technology (Mustafa, Rahman, & Sattar, 1993). (3) To manage common property resources. Many examples exist of formal and informal associations, often supported by NGOs, which manage irrigation water. In other cases, NGOs have supported group efforts in soil and water conservation, whether on private land or on a micro-watershed basis involving both private and common land (Fernandez, 1993a). They have also helped in managing common grazing and forest land in a sustainable fashion in relation both to technology and the creation of a capacity to make demands on government over, for example, access issues (Femandez, 1993b).