The organizational structure of the Ministry of Agriculture changed as part of state restructuring following Nepal’s historic transition from a unitary to a federal democratic republic in 2015. Regional directorates, district-level structures such as the district agriculture development office (DADO), district livestock service office (DLSO), and sub-district level structures such as 378 agriculture service centers (ASCs) and 999 livestock service centers (LSCs) have been abolished. Additionally, cooperative divisional offices overseeing cooperatives have also been dismantled. A Ministry of Land Management, Agriculture, and Cooperatives has been established as part of the establishment of province-level organizations. This ministry operates agriculture and livestock development-related Directorates, province-level laboratories, Agriculture Knowledge Centers (AKCs), Veterinary Hospitals, and Livestock Expert Centers (VHLEC) at the district level. Furthermore, the municipality’s agriculture and livestock departments have been established with sole agricultural and livestock extension responsibility.
These structural changes aim to deliver effective agricultural extension services for increased production and productivity. Seeing how the agriculture sector’s performance has deteriorated over the years is disheartening. One of the critical reasons for this poor performance is that the agriculture extension function, which is the heart and soul of agriculture growth, is missing from this structural change. This article examines the missing links in the current structure and suggests institutional reform to deliver services effectively.
Missing Links of Agriculture Extension
The private sector, a driving force in agricultural transformation, has a tangential involvement in the agricultural extension system. It is disappointing that only 25% of farmers have access to extension services, with 75% remaining out of the reach of extension service delivery.
The support system from the federal to the local level and feedback mechanism from the local to the federal level has been disrupted. Municipal-level agriculture technicians feel abandoned by provincial and federal government agencies, while federal and province-level agencies do not receive the information they require from local levels.
AKCs, which replaced DADOs, have become subsidy dispensing centers, raising concerns about flagrant subsidy misuse. Unfortunately, the crucial role of agriculture extension is missing from most AKCs, except for a few AKCs carrying out activities on the AKC chief’s own initiative.
The current research, extension, and farmer linkage mechanism is broken, paralyzing the agriculture production system. This linkage is essential for creating a demand-driven agriculture research and extension system, putting farmers at the center.
Municipal-level agriculture sections are heavily understaffed and lack the capacity to facilitate pluralistic extension for effective service delivery. Instead, the distribution of resources on populist programs has been a common trend.
Coordination, co-existence, and cooperation are the cornerstones for effective governance at all three levels of government as envisaged by the constitution and provisioned by the Federation, Province, and Local Level (coordination and interrelation) Act 2020. There is a provision for several coordination committees at the political level. Still, such a coordination mechanism is missing at the operational level, which is why agricultural institutions at the federal, provincial, and local levels are distracted and confused.
Way Forward
The organizational structures will only be functional when missing agriculture extension links are reinvigorated in the system. It is, therefore, essential to revisit and revitalize the current agriculture extension structure to enable it to provide timely, high-quality, and adequate service for solving the formidable challenges the agriculture sector faces.
AKCs (implies to VHLECs as well) need to be restructured to serve as a nodal point for a) interacting with research, extension, and education; b) ensuring coordination and cooperation among different levels of government; c) enhancing the capacity of municipal agriculture units, the private sector, and cooperatives.
Conventional agriculture extension considers “farmers” the only target audience, and other stakeholders engaged in the commodity value chain are generally excluded from program intervention. It is critical to recognize their contributions, assess their limitations, and consider them the target audiences for program intervention. This approach will help create a wealth-creating value chain where each value chain actor gets a fair share of the profit.
Developing and managing partnership programs engaging the private sector, cooperatives, and non-governmental entities should be the integral function of government extension, particularly at the local level. This entails a need to enhance the competence of extension staff in organizational capacity assessment, contract management, creating favorable policies and procedures, monitoring and evaluation, and coordination and linkages with other stakeholders, in addition to keeping abreast of extension communication technologies.
Information technology (IT) has been expanding at an alarming rate. According to the Ministry of Finance (2021), 82.79% of the population in Nepal has access to Internet services. However, despite some private-sector initiatives in this area, Nepal’s extension system has yet to benefit from the digital technology surge. IT-mediated agriculture extension can revolutionize the prevailing agriculture extension system by rapidly expanding the extension coverage effectively and efficiently. Youth can play an instrumental role in the digitalization of agriculture.
Conclusion
Agricultural extension service has been disrupted after the institutional restructuring of the three tiers of government. The Constitution’s spirit of providing prompt, high-quality, and adequate services has yet to be upheld. There is a lack of coordination, cooperation, and co-existence among the three tiers of government, resulting in inefficiency in service delivery. The linkage mechanism between research and extension, which existed before restructuring to some extent, has been completely broken. The above actions will make the current structure more organic and service-oriented
Padma Singh