Perceptions and attitude of farmers and extensionists towards extension service delivery in the Free State Province, South Africa

Abstract

Agricultural extension plays a pivotal role in most developing countries and is responsible for promoting the latest agricultural technologies among the people of the farming community in order to ensure sustainable agricultural growth. However, research shows that agricultural extension services has been performing poorly especially to small scale farmers in South Africa and other developing countries. Extension credibility is highly questionable and therefore the introduction of Extension Recovery Plan (ERP) in South Africa. The purpose of this report was to determine the effectiveness of agricultural service delivery as perceived by both extension officers and farmers in the Fezile Dabi District of the Free State Province and secondly to evaluate the impact of Extension Recovery Plan (ERP) used towards the improvement of extension service delivery in Fezile Dabi District. Farmers look upon the extension officers as technical advisors to provide them with information and advice that will enable them to obtain higher returns. A structured questionnaire was administered amongst 200 smallholder farmers randomly selected, and 15 extension officers from four local municipalities of Fezile Dabi district, namely Metsimaholo, Moqhaka, Mafube and Ngwathe. The majority of respondents (87%) perceive the role of extension agents as a critical source of relevant information. 93.5% of the farmers indicated that they regard their extension officers as competent technical and social in performing the extension services. Although there are many agricultural development programmes roll out, only 20% of farmers in the district is participating in these programmes. The farmers did not perceive improvement of extension service delivery, since the inception of Extension Recovery Plan in the district, although they have indicated an improvement in on farm production. The results show that extension staff have perhaps benefitted more from the ERP programme than the farmers. Some of the key recommendations are that linkages between the extension officer, farmers and research should be strengthened as the funding system for agricultural projects and programmes should be revised and more land should be made available to deserving farmers farming on commonage and communal land. Although one of the objectives of the Extension Recovery Plan programme was to improve communication between extension officers and farmers with the provision of Information and Communication Technology tools, farmers did not perceive any improvement in communicating with extension agents and this should urgently be addressed by extension management.