Agricultural Extension Practices For A Farming Community

The previous chapter reviewed the agricultural extension practices where extension plays an important role in facilitating changes in a farming community. The literature indicated that there are a lot of extension approaches due to change of ideas, purposes vary, and paradigm shift. It appears that, agricultural extension involves many different approaches and methodologies. And it is managed and delivered through a variety of institutional arrangements. It seems that no single approach best suit extension development in all circumstances. The purpose of this chapter is to consider farming from the perspective of the farmer and how such consideration might benefit extension approaches and outcomes. The farming environment is complex and†¦show more content†¦Nevertheless, after the introduction, the chapter begins by clarifying what kind of farmers this study refers to by defining smallholder farmer, elements of smallholder, and the farming environment as to understand and identify some key variables in farming environment that will enhance our investigation of farmers’ livelihood. 4.1 Introduction This chapter identifies various factors that affect farmers’ decision-making concerning their way of life. The sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA) is a way to improve understanding of the way of life of rural people (IFAD, 2011). It draws on the main factors (internal and external) that affect rural people s livelihoods and the natural relationships between these factors. SLA is based on the concept of capability, equity and sustainability (Chambers Conway, 1992).This study seeks to consider SLA as a framework to help understand the main factors that affect cocoa farmers’ livelihoods, the relationships between these factors and how decisions are made on growing cocoa. In this chapter the diffusion of innovation model, particularly the variables which influences an innovation s rate of adoption (after Rogers, 2003), and elements of smallholder farmer by HLPE (2013) (see Figure 11) will be viewed through SLA. The commonly known variables determining the rate of technology adoption in agriculture were listed by Rogers (2003). These variables include perceived attributes of