Discussion contributed on 20/06/2003 by K.Stigter

With Mohammad Rahimi I am worried about the extension aspects of agrometeorological services in the livelihood of farmers.
I was told by knowledgeable people that extension is often failing because those that deliver extension messages are not aware of the culture of the end users. While it are cultural aspects that very often determine the possibilities for male and female farmers as decision makers to apply extension messages (in our case agrometeorological services and information).
This is the reason why I have at several occasions proposed that intermediaries are used between those generating/carrying agrometeorological services messages and the end users. Such intermediaries need training. They need to be equipped with feasible agrometeorological services as well as with knowledge on the culture of the end users.
When recently talking to a friend in Indonesia, he showed me draft papers from an NGO in establishment, based in the Philippines, the Samdhana Institute Inc., that appears to have well understood the need for coping with these cultural dimensions. In a preliminary draft they indicate as their first purpose "To support research on and development of the cultural dimensions of community-based natural resource management strategies (with in their case Integrated Catchment Management and Biodiversity Protection being priority areas of work, but this depends on the target groups of end users concerned), as well as on the study and development of indigenous knowledge".
As a secondary purpose they propose "To center on supporting efforts to increase understanding, development and implementation of (in their case) Asian methods for conflict management and resolution, with a focus on conflict over access to and management of natural resources".
We may decide as agricultural meteorologists that this is all very far from our fields of competence and therefore can't bother us. However, all our work is just done for nothing, with respect to farming communities in developing countries, if these problems of absorption of well geared agrometeorological services by the end users are not solved.
I remain worried that without the training of appropriate extension intermediaries we will reach few users with agrometeorological information. There is ample evidence now in the literature that the needs of farmers for such information are very different from what is on offer. This means that we equip the extension wrongly if at all. And this alienates us as agrometeorologists in developing countries from the very target groups of farmers for whom we want to make a difference in their livelihood with agrometeorological services.