Scaling the Uptake of Agricultural Innovations: The role of sustainable extension and advisory services

Farmers observing new corn crops
USAID works with local partner Farms Inputs Promotion-Africa to help increase the productivity and incomes of rural farming families in Kenya as part of the U.S. Government's Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative, Feed the Future.

Event Information

Achieving large-scale adoption of agricultural innovations among resource poor farmers has taken many forms through development history. Many successive approaches have all won pockets of success, yet all have largely been abandoned (or soon will be) in the search for more effective, less-costly, broadly replicable means of inducing technological change among the poor. What have these experiences taught us? What is the proper role of agricultural extension and advisory services in facilitating technological change? How can the services and opportunities that extension efforts offer be expanded and sustained?

Paul McNamara and Brent Simpson, Project Director and Deputy Director of the USAID Modernizing Extension and Advisory Services (MEAS) project, spoke on the sustainable financing of extension services for scaling the adoption of agricultural innovations. The presenters provided an overview of alternative means of offering and financing agricultural extension services and the issues surrounding the various approaches.

Drawing insights from comparative country experiences and agricultural history to frame the challenge of sustainable agricultural extension services, the presentation explored: the challenges of the uniqueness of agricultural and small-holder systems to scaling efforts; and the contribution of sustainably financed extension services to small-holder farmers access and adoption of new agricultural technologies at relevant scales.

Speakers

Paul McNamara

McNamara Headshot

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Paul E. McNamara serves as Director of the USAID-funded Modernizing Extension and Advisory Services (MEAS) Project, which works with its consortium members and other partners to strengthen agricultural and nutrition extension services around the world with a goal of increasing small-holder economic and food security. McNamara is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, the Division of Nutritional Sciences, and the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also serves as an Extension Specialist with University of Illinois Extension and has garnered team and individual awards for his extension efforts. His research, outreach and teaching areas focus at the intersection of consumer economics and health economics. McNamara holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota and he holds an M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School. He received his B.A. in Economics from Wheaton College (Illinois). Since 1982 McNamara has been involved in international development activities. He has worked in The Gambia, the Philippines, India, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mexico, Honduras, and other countries in the context of international development, research, education, and business.

Brent Simpson

Headshot of Brent Simpson

Michigan State University

Brent M. Simpson is an Associate Professor in International Development, Department of Agriculture, Food and Resource Economics at Michigan State University (MSU). Over the past 30 years he has worked in over twenty-five countries, primarily in Africa. He is the former Program Leader for Technology Transfer and Systems Development with the Africa Rice Center, former Convener of the Rural Policy and Project Planning Program, Institute of Social Studies, in The Hague, and has carried out consultancies and advisory work with the CGIAR, DFID, FAO, MCC, USAID, World Bank, and WWF. He currently serves as the Deputy Director of the USAID MEAS Project, manages MSU’s involvement in two USAID funded projects in Senegal, and is leading an agricultural climate change adaption study for USAID in the Sahel.

Event Registration Information

Spotlight Event

Online and In-person Event
Online Eastern Standard Time Washington, District of Columbia, 20002, United States

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