Countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, and Denmark, which have very advanced agricultural sectors, have always enjoyed strong extension services, first public, and now public and/or private. However, this is lacking in developing countries.
In India, the Training & Visit System, a top-down, public sector-driven model of extension, played an important role in the Green Revolution. However, it was not well suited for the diverse farming system of rainfed areas and proved incapable of meeting evolving challenges, including improving the sustainability of farming systems, promoting agricultural diversification, and integrating farmers into dynamic markets.
In many sub-Saharan African countries, smallholders are characterized by poor adoption of technologies, partly explained by the absence of “smallholder-friendly” research findings. Another reason is that research stations in Africa have tended to develop ideas with too little attention to smallholder labor constraints, to the riskiness of the innovations, to the likely availability of inputs, and to the presence of markets.