Agricultural education and extension are complex processes that involve many different actors, approaches, and methods. There are many disciplines that underly the field, making it rich and varied. This also makes the field complex. The complexity can make it difficult to analyse agricultural education and extension and to make generalisations and inferences. This issue highlights some of those complex processes inherent in our field with regard to how farmers learn and how extension interventions occur. The articles examine factors that influence how farmers learn in Tasmania and Uganda (Hall et al. and Kalule et al.). They look at the processes that are part of educational and extension interventions, using farmer field schools in Indonesia (Khumairoh et al.) and multi-actor processes in Ireland (Macken-Walsh). Finally, Godwin and colleagues consider how to institutionalise gender in extension and advisory services amidst complex factors in Pakistan.
The first article, ‘Using the Theory of Planned Behaviour framework to understand Tasmanian dairy farmer engagement with extension activities to inform future delivery’ by Alison Hall, Lydia Ruth Turner, and Sue Kilpatrick focuses on understanding why farmers engage or don't engage with extension. Rather than just look at adoption, they included social factors that influenced farmer behaviour and intentions. Using a qualitative approach, the authors segmented farmers into three groups: ‘Unengaged’, ‘Triallers’, and ‘Adapters’. They found all the groups positive towards extension. However, one key result was the perception that extension focuses on younger and less experienced farmers. Recommendations from this study can be used to design extension services that reach all these groups. The research shows the complexity of farmer perceptions and behaviour.
Stephen Wamala Kalule, Haroon Sseguya, Duncan Ongeng, and Gabriel Karubanga submitted the article ‘Facilitating conditions for farmer learning behaviour in the student-to-farmer university outreach’ in Uganda. Many universities are putting increased emphasis on community outreach, including Gulu University in Uganda. The authors examined how faculty supervision support to students during farm placements and other facilitating conditions influenced farmer learning in university outreach programmes. The theory of reasoned action guided the research. Using structural equation modelling of cross-sectional data from farmers who had hosted university students, they found that faculty supervision to students during their placements significantly influenced intentions for and actual farmer learning behaviour. Their research demonstrated the inter-linkages between perceptions and attitudes of the students and the farmers, which in turn affected behaviour.
A third article is ‘Modifying the farmer field school method to support on-farm adaptation of complex rice systems’ by Uma Khumairoh, Egbert A. Lantinga, Didik Suprayogo, Rogier Patrick Olaf Schulte, and Jeroen Groot. The authors used a participatory learning methodology to modify the farmer field school approach so they could better integrate farmer feedback into management of complex rice systems in Indonesia. They found that the modified farmer field school was a promising approach to training farmers. At the same time, extension and research could simultaneously identify adaptations of agricultural innovations and monitor the evolution of complex systems under diverse conditions. The complexity was found not just in the rice ecosystems but also in the agricultural innovation system – including actors and processes – in which it was situated.
Áine Macken-Walsh contributed with ‘Multi-Actor Co-design of Extension Interventions: Paradoxes Arising in Three Cases in the Republic of Ireland’. Using an ethnographic approach, the author presents initiation, process, methodologies and outputs of three multi-actor co-design extension interventions in Ireland's agriculture sector. She found that awareness of dynamics and paradoxes of multi-actor co-design supports facilitation of processes and impacts of outcomes. Her use of the ethnographic approach, with its rich descriptions of the processes, allowed for demystification of the complex multi-actor co-design processes.
Finally, the article ‘Identifying gender-responsive approaches in rural advisory services that contribute to the institutionalisation of gender in Pakistan’ by Julien David Lamontagne Godwin, Sarah Cardey, Frances Williams, Peter Dorward, and Naeem Aslam illustrates the complex processes found in agricultural education and extension. These authors add another important element to the study of extension processes by looking at approaches that help to institutionalise gender. Interviewing a number of extension agents, they studied the perceptions of access to information by gender. The findings contribute to in-depth insight into individual and institutional processes of gendered agricultural information access, taking a country's socio-cultural context into consideration, with implications for national and international rural advisory service initiatives.
As you peruse the articles, please be aware of the richness of the many theories and disciplines underlying agricultural education and extension. Consider how the approaches and tools used for analysis take complexity into consideration and allow for better understanding of the processes making up agricultural education and extension. These findings can help to improve the theory and practice of agricultural education and extension.