Funnel Vision

• The United Nations predicts that much of the world's population growth between 2008 and 2050 will occur in developing countries, including all the countries in Africa (Population Reference Bureau 2008).
  
  
• In Malawi, an East African country, the 2010 population estimate was 15.5 million while the projected 2050 population estimate was 37.4 million, an increase 135% (Population Reference Bureau 2010). (Filter: Malawi)
  
  
• Agricultural activities in Malawi comprise 87% of the labor force, with 80% of food production and 65% of agriculture GDP coming from smallholder farms, mostly engaged in growing maize (New Agriculturist, Country Profile –Malawi 2001). Inefficiencies in farming have contributed to 35% of the population of Malawi being undernourished (Population Reference Bureau 2010). (Filter: inefficient smallholder farming)

• Since the 1970’s, widespread and various agriculture extension education efforts among smallholder famers have been enacted to improve food security and crop production at both the national and local levels (Davis 2008). (Filter: agriculture extension education)
  
  
• Research has shown that extension efforts that are tailored to local situations are more effective at effecting change than standardized programs applied systematically across a wider geography (Anderson 2002, cited in Davis 2008). (Filter: localized extension)
  
  
• Farmer Field Schools (FFS) exemplify one model of extension applied to agriculture that is flexible enough to adjust to local cultural and environmental needs (Gallagher 2006). At FFS, small groups of farmers meet regularlymwith an agricultural expert or government extension agent and engage in discovery learning, famer experimentation, and group problem solving (Davis 2008). (Filter: Farmer Field Schools)
  
  
• FFS are in place in all 27 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and have met with some success in terms of increased productivity and learning (Davis 2008, Tripp 2005). (Filter: FFS in Sub-Saharan Africa)
  
  
• However, as Davis (2008) reports in a review on extension education in Sub-Saharan Africa, “as with many [extension] models worldwide, there has not been enough effort to provide hard evidence of the effectiveness of FFS. Most FFS programs rely on ex post evaluations, which are not able to provide rigorous results as to how the program compares to alternative programs or to the counterfactual situation of having no FFS [traditional apprenticeship]. If there are data, they often remain in the grey literature, and the information is not available to stakeholders who could provide peer review and validation of the methods and results.” (Filter: lack of comparative research on FFS vs. alternative extension models)
  
  
• One recently developed alternative model of extension education in Malawi is the School of Agriculture for Family Independence (SAFI), a privately funded Agriculture Technical School (ATS) that incorporates a 1-year period of formal classroom and lab-based curriculum followed by a 1-year FFS-type learning environment, with instruction provided mainly by faculty from the University of Malawi. (Fitler: Agriculture Technical Schools; SAFI)
  
  
• The purpose of this research is to rigorously describe and compare three models of agricultural education and extension in Malawi: ATS, FFS, and traditional apprenticeship.

Literature Cited

Anderson, J. R. (2002). Ecosystem health and economic development: Rural vision to action. Rural Development Department, World Bank, Washington, DC, U.S.A.

Davis, K. E. (2008). Extension in Sub-Saharan Africa: Overview and assessment of past and current models, and future prospects. Journal of International Agricultural and Extension Education 15(3), 15-28.

Gallagher, K. D., Braun, A. R., and Duveskog, D. (2006). Demystifying farmer field school concepts. www.infobridge.org/asp/documents/3200.pdf

New Agriculturist. (2001). Country profile: Malawi. Downloaded from the world wide web on October 14, 2010 http://www.new-ag.info/country/profile.php?a=874

Population Reference Bureau. (2008). “World population highlights,” Population Bulletin 63(3).

Population Reference Bureau. (2010). Data by Geography: Malawi: Summary. Downloaded from the world wide web on October 14, 2010 http://www.prb.org/Datafinder/Geography/Summary.aspx?region=41&region_type=2

Tripp, R. Wijeratne, M. and Piyadasa, V. H. (2005). What should we expect from farmer field schools? A Sri Lanka case study. World Development 33(10), 1705-1720.