TARGETING TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION
 THROUGH COORDINATED ON-FARM RESEARCH3

 Peter E. Hildebrand4


Introduction

With the creation of the Cooperative Extension Service in the United States in 1914, public
agricultural technology diffusion has been within its domain. The research-extension model
followed is one in which the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Land
Grant universities and their experiment stations develop technology and pass the information to
Extension. In turn, Extension, by various means including on-farm validation and
demonstration, processes it to create extension messages (recommendations) for farmer
consumption. That the process appeared to work very well in this country was justification to
carry the model to the Third World following World War I where attempts were being made
to rapidly develop agriculture and the economies of less advantaged countries.

The process so captivated the international development agencies that early efforts were designed
simply to transfer US technology to farmers in the Third World. Later, when these efforts
largely failed, the problem was thought to be that technology for temperate agriculture was not
appropriate for tropical agriculture. National and international research organizations were
created to modify or develop technologies more appropriate to the climatic conditions of these
mainly tropical countries. The Green Revolution was heralded as proof that this new approach
was working.

Still, by the early 1970s it was becoming obvious that even technology tailored for tropical
climates was not trickling down to the small, limited resource farmers who had less than the best
physical resources and little or no access to infrastructure such as markets and irrigation. These
account for the large majority of all farmers in most countries. A new approach now called
Farming Systems Research-Extension (FSRE), with heavy emphasis on participation by the these
limited resource farmers, was kindled.5 FSRE was based on a bottom-up approach rather than
top down from the experiment station to extension to farmer. Heavy emphasis was on
participation by the small-scale, limited resource farmers in diagnosis and evaluation of potential
new technologies on their own farms. Coordinated, participatory on-farm technology


 3 Prepared for presentation at the Association for Farming Systems Research-Extension North American
Symposium on Systems Approaches in North American Agriculture and Natural Resources: Broadening the Scope of
FSRE. University of Florida, Gainesville. October 12-16, 1993.

 4 Professor, Food and Resource Economics Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611-0240.
Constructive comments on an earlier draft are acknowledged from L. Van Crowder, J.K. McDermott and N.G. Ruling.

 SSome argue that the extension model tranferred from the United States was very similar to much of what is
now known as FSRE. However, "when we tried to take Extension overseas, we tried to transfer fir and not function"
(J.K. McDermott, personal communication). This was exacerbated by the fact that many research and extension workers in
the receiving countries were not familiar with prevailing agricultural conditions, unlike the early American experience.