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 turns out to be a very difficult question.1 Rural development requires

 a complex combination of suitable conditions--seeds, fertilizer,

 pest control, water management, roads, transportation, markets, price

 incentives, credit, security, fair tenure conditions, consumer goods,

 local organizations, effective administration, access to a fair

 judicial system, a set of values and social relations that encourage

 change, and technical knowledge.

 Extension services can easily improve the knowledge factor,

 but it is rare that this by itself (or any other single factor by

 itself) can make a dramatic increase in welfare, much less production.

 Moreover, the payoff of extension is closely related to the specific

 qualities of the technology that is being popularized. Energeti-

 cally extending technologies which are no better than traditional

 ones is not beneficial and is not only a waste of money but can be

 detrimental because efforts at modernization will be discredited.

 Likewise extending high yield varieties does little good if fertili-

 zer and pesticides (and credit to buy them) are unavailable, or if

 timely irrigation cannot be provided. Nor will many farmers benefit


 Excellent surveys of the issues involved in evaluating extension
programs are available in Robert Chambers, Two Frontiers in Rural
Management: Agricultural Extension and Managing the Exploitation
of Communal Natural Resources (Sussex: Institute of Development
Studies, 1975), pp. 2-4; and E.B. Rice, Extension in the Andes,
esp. pp.'161-166.

 Excellent statements concerning the wide range of factors
which are necessary to "get agriculture moving" can be found in the
writings of Arthur Mosher, Technical Cooperation; Getting Agriculture
Moving (New York: Praeger, 1966); and Creating a Progressive
Rural Structure (New York: Agricultural Development Council, 1969).