Weak links between extension staff, researchers and farmers. A farmer-centered, serviceoriented extension system provides the conduit through which common farmer problems get
identified and flagged for the attention of researchers so they can help farmers to solve practical problems that limit farm productivity. Nonetheless, links between extension and research remain generally weak in Myanmar. “Of particular concern is the absence of operational interaction between staff of the Central Agricultural Research Institute (CARI’s) outlying research farms and staff of the extension services. Extension agents rarely come to the research stations and researchers do not routinely visit extension offices or demonstration sites.” (FAO 2005, p.112). Our interviews with stakeholders suggest that these links between extension and research still remain weak in 2012.
Links between extension officers and farmers are similarly limited. In part, extension staff find themselves constrained by an acute shortage of transport and field allowances. In addition, institutional tendencies to instruct rather than listen to farmers have become embedded over two generations of command and control management of Myanmar’s agricultural sector. Consequently, “The strong extension force of the Myanmar Agricultural Service (MAS) is mostly occupied with achievement of central production targets for pillar crops and especially for rice. To have a more significant impact on improving farm incomes, crop production and the alleviation of rural poverty the service requires re-orientation within a new enabling environment for farm production.” (FAO 2005, p.55) A more recent investigation in 2012 similarly finds that, “extension of agricultural advice is virtually non-existent with farmers depending heavily on each other, private suppliers of inputs and wholesale purchasers.” (Anderson Irrigation 2012,p.14). As a result of cutbacks in extension staff imposed on MOAI in 2006 and limited travel budgets, many of the farmers we met during our field visits had never encountered an extension agent.