These types of extension systems require intensive services. In the Kenya

Tea Development Authority, an extension agent serves only 120 farmers; in

a tobacco scheme in Tanzania, an agent served 300 to 800 farmers. Mobility

is important to deliver services, so agents need to be equipped with motor

cycles or bicycles.

 These extension systems frequently encourage monocropping of their

particular commodity. From the farmer's point of view, this may cause

problems because generally the farmer has a very complex, mixed farming

system, in which he grows several different cereals, some vegetables,

some cash crops, and livestock. The multiplicity of activities reduces

risk; moreover each commodity frequently produces byproducts which are

inputs into other rural activities. For example, cereal straw is animal

fodder; sorghum stalks are building materials; animal manure is fertilizer;

legumes build the soil and climb up maize stalks. Unless there are vast

changes in the market system, farmers frequently cannot specialize in the

particular commodity in which the colonial extension agency is interested.

 Colonial extension systems normally require a staff that is literate

and fairly highly educated to handle the complex record-keeping inherent

in input supplies, credit, marketing, etc. This requirement normally

excludes local farmers, who'have no access to education, from becoming

regular staff in such an organization. Thus the staff will normally e, drawn from
the urban population, even though these people have only a limited understanding

of the rural economy and society. However, local farmers might be employed
as laborers or as communicators to give out specific information.
 Colonial authorities were also concerned about general rural devel-

opment to alleviate recurrent famines, which threatened the legitimacy


 1Uma Lele, The Design of Rural Development: Lessons from Africa
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1975), p. 67.