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.
