This document summarizes the online discussion. Integrating nutrition into the curricula of agriculture education institutions: Strengthening human capacity to promote nutrition-sensitive agriculture held on FAO’s Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum) from 10 to 27 November 2015. 

Over the three weeks of discussion, 36 contributions were shared by participants from 18 countries. The topic introduction and questions proposed as well as all contributions received are available on the discussion page: 

www.fao.org/fsnforum/forum/discussions/integrating_nutrition 

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This document summarizes the online discussion What role can Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services play in realizing gender equality and improved nutrition? which was held on the FAO Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum) from 19 June to 9 July 2017. The discussion was facilitated by Hajnalka Petrics, Soniia David and Fatima Hachem from FAO, and Edye Kuyper from INGENAES.

In this discussion, participants shared ideas on the role Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services (AEAS) should have with regard to broader development. Participants were, in particular, invited to submit examples of AEAS successfully addressing gender inequalities and improved nutrition, but also to discuss the challenges that have impeded them to do so. Furthermore, participants were asked what the role and main activities of a global forum such as the GFRAS Nutrition Working Group should be in helping AEAS to become more gender-sensitive and able to contribute to improved nutrition.

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The Case of India’s Agricultural Extension Policy

Many countries have recognized the need to revive agricultural advisory or extension services (the terms are used interchangeably here) as a means of using agriculture as an engine of pro-poor growth; reaching marginalized, poor, and female farmers; and addressing new challenges, such as environmental degradation and climate change. In spite of ample experience with extension reform worldwide, identifying the reform options most likely to make extension more demand-driven remains a major challenge. The concept of demand-driven services implies making extension more responsive to the needs of all farmers, including women and those who are poor and marginalized. It also implies making extension more accountable to farmers and, as a consequence, more effective.

This essay discusses various options for providing and financing agricultural advisory services, which involve the public and private sectors as well as a third sector comprising nongovernmental organizations and farmer-based organizations. We review the market and state failures, and the “community” failures (failures of non-governmental and farmer-based organizations) inherent in existing models of providing and financing agricultural extension services and then outline strategies to address those failures and make extension demand-driven. Then we examine India’s Policy Framework for Agricultural Extension, which has demand-driven extension as one of its major objectives, and review available survey information on the state of extension in India. We conclude that although the framework proposes a wide range of strategies to make agricultural extension demand-driven, it is less specific in addressing the challenges inherent in those strategies. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the strategies proposed in the framework will be able to address one of the major problems identified by farm household surveys: access to agricultural extension.

The Government of Ethiopia is highly committed to sustainably increasing agricultural production to meet the growing demand for food, industrial raw materials, and foreign currency earnings. In order to respond the growing demand of different stakeholders, there is a need of dynamic and proactive extension system. Rigorous and vibrant extension system is a key policy instrument for necessary behavioral and attitudinal changes and creating demands on national agricultural extension programs. Agricultural extension has been emphasized by development experts as crucial in achieving agricultural development, poverty reduction, and food security.  By recognizing this, the government of Ethiopia has made great efforts to transform the agricultural sector mainly by strengthening its extension services as part of the general agriculture policy reform. In spite of considerable efforts made to improve the extension system of the country in the past, the system is not bringing the desired results. Thus, it is of paramount importance to prepare a full-fledged extension strategy which takes into consideration the growing demand of agricultural development and that also shows the future direction of the extension services.