Historically, agricultural extension (also known as agricultural advisory services) was conceptualised as a public service in Pakistan. That is why the government sector has been the primary source of formal extension services aimed at improving crop yields. Presently, provincial agriculture departments are responsible for providing these services at the doorstep of farmers through thousands of field assistants and agriculture officers, who are deployed up to the union council level.

A big question mark, however, remains over the geographic coverage, efficiency, effectiveness and impact of these public services. The great majority of farmers opine that the decades-long, supply-driven delivery model of agricultural extension in Pakistan has conceptual, design, and implementation flaws, and therefore, it has abysmally failed to deliver results, as is evident from Pakistan’s lower crop yields than the world averages. Likewise, the yields of the top-performing province, Punjab, remain far less than Indian Punjab, which has comparable agro-climatic conditions.

The biggest challenge for the agricultural extension today is to serve over 8.26 million farms (Agricultural Census 2010), among which 90 per cent are small farms — less than 12 acres. Under the current geographic area-specific model, an extension worker (government employee) is supposed to provide services to hundreds of farmers on multiple crops, which is humanly not possible.

Likewise, it is almost impossible for a worker to develop expertise in the production technologies of dozens of crops cultivated in their area. As a result, their advice is mostly generic, which can’t reap the desired outcomes.

The changing landscape warrants a new agri extension model where a farmer can get advisory services from a service provider of their choice

Increasingly complex farming operations, multiple crops and, in turn, dozens of their cultivars (varieties), hybrid and Bt crops, use of different types of machinery, and a wide range of agricultural inputs necessitate the use of specialised crop production knowledge.

The current model mostly relies on the motivation and capabilities of extension workers, but neither government departments nor workers make serious efforts to upgrade their knowledge base and skill set. Therefore, their expertise remains below average.

Some other challenges for extension services are the shrinking size of farms due to land division, illiterate or information-poor farmers, risk-averse approach of farmers, climate change which requires new agricultural practices, and increasing pressure for compliance with food safety standards.

The rural landscape is changing, and a new sociocultural milieu is evolving, which greatly impacts the delivery model of agricultural extension. Farmers are now no longer available at the extension workers’ convenience — a key assumption of the current model. That is why the coverage of public extension services is hardly 20pc.

Gradually, the focus of extension staff has been shifting from core extension activities to the duties related to regulating pesticides and fertiliser sales, farm subsidies, Sunday Bazaars, etc. Therefore, farmers have been relegated to the last priority, especially when there is no built-in mechanism of accountability of extension staff by farmers — the real stakeholders.

Even after spending billions of rupees on development and non-development budgets and having thousands of extension workers on board in each province, the number of unserved and dissatisfied farmers is growing day by day.

Many countries where the public sector historically provided extension services have transferred these services to the private sector. A few months back, the Punjab Agriculture Department took the initiative to outsource extension services to the private sector in four divisions.

However, with a structured scope of work, the issued request for proposal demanded a replica of the current extension model with a similar institutional set-up (formation) at the grass root level that has already failed to deliver.

The changing landscape of Pakistan’s agriculture sector warrants a new demand-driven and crop-specific extension model where a farmer can get advisory services from a private service provider (company or individual) of their own choice in lieu of a fee paid by the farmer or government.

For it, a policy shift is required for a change in the government’s role from service provision (publicly funded-publicly executed) to funding (publicly funded-privately implemented) and, after a few years, simply restricting itself to the role of regulator. In that case, the government should also assume responsibility for benchmarking, standard setting and coordination.

Such a policy shift entails two major challenges. First, unlike the livestock sector of Pakistan, the market of such services has not yet developed as a commercial activity. However, under contract farming, several companies provide their farmers free extension services. Likewise, pesticides, fertilisers, seeds, and other agricultural inputs sellers have their own extension workforce who carry out marketing-cum-extension activities as well as conduct capacity-building sessions (seminars, field visits, workshops, training sessions, meetings, etc).

Such initiatives under the private sector are not only enhancing the appetite for private extension services but also increasing the supply of trained extension workforce. An informal shift from the public to the private sector is already taking place as progressive farmers hire private extension workers, researchers, and faculty members of academic institutions to get crop advisory. However, the government should encourage and enable the private sector to play an active role in the provision of extension services.

Second, a big challenge for the government is to provide private services to more than 7m smallholders, who either can’t afford or are not convinced to pay for such services. As a solution, the government can provide them with extension vouchers (non-negotiable) for a few years. These vouchers would be redeemed against the services provided by any registered private service provider. In essence, this will be a publicly funded but privately delivered extension.

At the start, piloting in a few districts can establish proof of concept, remove glitches, and help refine the processes.

Khalid Wattoo is a farmer and a consultant in the social sector.

Rahema Hasan is a political economist and graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, October 24th, 2022