25

innovative got only 6 percent of the extension visits. Other surveys

in Kenya agree.2 Likewise, even in socialist Tanzania, with strong

rhetorical pressures toward equality, one survey showed that 59 percent

of wealthy farmers had a high level of extension contact, while

only 29 percent of poor farmers had such contacts.3 In one locality

of Northern Nigeria, the local elites had reasonably good knowledge

about extension activity, while most farmers had negligable informa-

tion.4 Thus, the normal pattern is that extension services concentrate

on services for the larger, progressive farmers.
 This unequal access to extension services can have different consequences

for long term trends in income distribution and social structure, depending on the
character of institutions and on the markets. In many countries this

tendency of extension to help primarily the rural wealthy reinforces

underlying economic, political, and social trends. With profits coming

from improved technology, large progressive'farmers may buy out their

neighbors who are unable to meet the costs of commercial farming,

particularly if land ceiling restrictions are lax. Some small farmers,

and particularly their sons, may have no choice but to become land-

less laborers or migrants to cities. Thus a knowledge gap between

the rich and poor reinforces an economic gap.5 These tendencies will


 David Leonard, pp. 125-177.
 Joseph Ashcroft, Niels Roling, Joseph Kariuki, and Fred
Chege, Extension and the Forgotten Farmer (Wageningen: Afdelingen
voor Sociate Wetenschappen aan de Landbouwhogeschool, 1973), p. 31.
 James DeVries, "Agricultural Extension and the Development
of Ujamaa Villages in Tanzania: Toward a Diological Agricultural Ex-
tension Model," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison,
1978, p. 167.
 Peter Matlon, "The Size, Distribution, Structure, and Deter-
minants of Personal Income Among Farmers in the North of Nigeria,"
Cornell Agricultural Economics Ph.D. dissertation, 1977, p. 390.
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