IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2015) 6-2

Research article
erd

Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services in Bosnia,
Montenegro and Serbia: An Overview
SNEZANA JANKOVIC
Institute for Science Application in Agriculture, Belgrade, Serbia

ALEKSANDRA DESPOTOVIC
University of Podgorica, Podgorica, Montenegro

SINISA BERJAN*
University of East Sarajevo, East Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
E-mail: sinisaberjan@yahoo.com

HAMID EL BILALI
Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari (CIHEAM-IAMB), Valenzano, Bari, Italy

NOUREDDIN DRIOUECH
Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari (CIHEAM-IAMB), Valenzano, Bari, Italy

VEDRAN TOMIC
Institute for Science Application in Agriculture, Belgrade, Serbia
Received 13 February 2015

Accepted 7 October 2015(*Corresponding Author)

Abstract Agriculture is still important for socio-economic development in rural areas of Bosnia,
Montenegro, and Serbia (BMS), especially in terms of employment and income generation.
Good extension is recognized as a key to agricultural development. The paper aims to provide
an overview on public agricultural extension and advisory services (AEAS) in BMS. It is basedon an extended secondary data review and primary data collected by questionnaires with rural
people, as well as semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with agriculturaladvisors and extension specialists carried out in the years 2012-2013. Current agriculturalextension structures has mainly been developed in the last two decades with international
donors’ help. Public extension structures exist besides other advisory services providers.
Advisors use many groups and individual extension methods. Advisory services face manyfinancial, management, and technical problems. Extension agents spend most of their working
hours doing administrative tasks and lack systematic professional in-service training offers.
Agriculture multifunctionality and the increasing rural economy diversification represent a real
challenge for agricultural extension services. Public extension is largely focused on crop andanimal production while rural development is only partially served. Rural advisory work is
restricted to the activities of individual extension agents, as well as NGOs, donor projects, andprivate advisors. The involvement of other actors in rural extension work is crucial if the system
is to meet rural people’s needs. AEAS have been trying to address the emerging challenges
through modernization of their extension approaches and communication media, as well as
diversification and decentralization of their services. Nevertheless, there are still someweaknesses that should be overcome. Developing a pluralistic, participatory, decentralized,
farmer-led, and market-driven advisory system is a milestone in the process of promoting ruralinnovation and diversification, and harmonization with the European Union’s acquis.
Keywords agriculture, extension, advisory services, Bosnia, Montenegro, SerbiaⒸISERD133

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INTRODUCTION
Despite the increasing diversification of the rural economy in the three countries of the Western
Balkans (WB) - Bosnia, Montenegro, and Serbia (BMS) - agriculture still plays an important socioeconomic role. The share of agriculture sector in gross domestic product amounts to 8.2% in Bosnia(EC, 2014a), 8.8% in Montenegro (EC, 2014b), and 11.4% in Serbia (EC, 2014c). The primary sector
employs 18.9% of the total labor force in Bosnia (EC, 2014a), around 4.5% in Montenegro (EC,2014b), and 21.3% in Serbia (EC, 2014c). Agricultural sectors in BMS are characterized by theprevalence of small family farms. Rural areas lag behind in terms of socio-economic development andstill face many problems. The share of rural population is around 61% in Bosnia, 36% in Montenegro,
and about 45% in Serbia (World Bank, 2014).
Easy and timely access to reliable and updated information is crucial for agricultural and ruraldevelopment (ARD). Good extension is recognized as a key to agricultural development (USAID,
2012) and can contribute to improving the welfare of farmers and other people living in rural areas(International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, 2010). One can simply say that “extension is getting
knowledge to farmers so they will make a positive change” (USAID, 2012). Advisory service iscommonly used as an alternate term for extension services. Apart from their conventional function ofproviding knowledge and technology to improve agricultural productivity, agricultural advisory
services are also expected to link farmers to markets, promote sustainable production techniques, etc.
(Swanson, 2008; Swanson and Rajalahti, 2010). Agriculture multifunctionality and rural economy
diversification are changing dramatically the classical crop production-centred mission of agriculturalextension and advisory services (AEAS). They need to provide a wider range of services to a morediverse clientele to improve their capacity to access, adapt, and use knowledge, inputs and services(World Bank, 2008). For extension to be successful, it needs to include credible content, effective
delivery, and be relevant to, and applicable by clients (USAID, 2012). In the WB, current agriculturalextension structures have been developed mainly within the last two decades with the help ofinternational donors. Public extension structures exist besides other providers such as NGOs andcommercial extension agents (FAO, 2011).
The paper aims at providing an overview on public AEAS in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH),
Montenegro, and Serbia with a particular focus on governance, financing, and extension approaches.
METHODOLOGY
The paper is based on an extended cross-checked secondary data review (e.g. FAO,USAID, European
Commission (EC), Ministries of Agriculture in BMS, World Bank, etc.) and primary data collected byquestionnaires with 108 rural households in BiH (winter 2012), 106 in Montenegro (autumn 2013), and
104 in Serbia (spring 2013). Questionnaires dealt, among others, with access of rural people to services
provided by AEAS. A special attention was devoted to services regarding the off-farm sector and ruraldevelopment. Moreover, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with agriculturaladvisors and extension specialists were carried out in the years 2012-2013. The prepared checklist forinterviews dealt with many issues regarding AEAS in BMS such as (i) governance and organization
structure; (ii) financing; (iii) human resources; (iv) role in building social capacity; (v) decentralization;(vi) gender; (vii) and advisory approaches, methods, and media. All secondary data were criticallyanalyzed by key informants from the AEAS. Some recommendations were made to improve the AEAS
performance in BMS.

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services in Bosnia and Herzegovina
AEAS, as known in practice world-wide,started to exist in Bosnia in 2002. They are organized on
entity level: Agricultural Advisory Service of the Republic of Srpska (AAS-RS), cantonal agriculturalextension services in the Federation of BiH (FBiH), and the Department of Extension Services in
Brcko District. In May 2002, the Agricultural Extension Service of RS (AES-RS) was establishedwithin the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management of RS (MAFWR-RS). Two years
later, the Government of RS established the Agency for Providing Services in Agriculture (APSA), asa separate organization with a wide range of activities including agricultural extension. In January 2013,
APSA and the Agency for Animal Breeding and Selection were integrated in the AAS-RS, which was
one of the five departments within the MAFWM-RS. The AAS-RS is headquartered in Banja Luka andthere are seven regional offices i.e. Banja Luka, Gradiska, Prijedor, Doboj, Bijeljina, Sokolac, andTrebinje; where 36 advisors and 24 administrative staff (36.7% female) work for 221,000 rural
households in the RS. The extension system includes 77 municipal based advisers - within the
Department for Economic and Social Affairs - in most areas (MAFWM-RS, 2010). In the FBiH, theextension system was established at Canton level but the commitment of most Cantons was minimal
and no central services were established to support the system. Field advisors were part of themunicipal administration (FAO, 2011).
The AAS-RS is financed by the MAFWM-RS budget. All services provided by Bosnian public
advisory systems are free; advisors’ work is paid for with state, entity or municipality money (FAO,
2011). Besides public extension services, many institutions provide advisory services such as
cooperatives, agricultural and veterinary institutes and stations, as well as private actors.
Advisors use many group extension and communication methods (e.g. lectures, seminars,
demonstrations, field days, events, etc.) and individual methods (e.g. farm visits, contacts in extension
offices, phone calls). The main media used are the internet, leaflets, posters, brochures, and mass media.
Advisors provide services dealing mainly with agriculture production, processing and marketing (i.e.
vegetables and fruit growing, animal husbandry, processing and quality of agro-food products, agroeconomy). In the RS, out of the 36 extension agents, 33 are agriculture engineers that have general
educational orientation while the number of specialists is modest. The fact that the majority of the field
staff is agricultural experts, it induces a strong focus on production techniques and a relative preference
given to large farms (FAO, 2011).
Advisory services face many finance, management, and technical support problems. According to
the vice-minister in charge of AASRS (January 2015), the main problems faced by the public
agricultural extension system are (Pasalic B., pers. commun.): different levels of extension service
development between Bosnian entities, uncompleted/weak legislative (at the entity and state level),insufficient coordination between RS and FBiH extension services, low number of extension agents,
limited funding, weak participation in international projects, undeveloped system of extension agents’training, low interest of farmers for training, and weak collaboration with the research institutions.
According to FAO (2011), advisors spend most of their working hours doing administrative tasks
related to incentive measures. Bosnian extension agents lack systematic offers of professional training
as there is no systematically planned and performed in-service training program. However, there aredonor projects that provide training on a broad range of agriculture and rural development issues.
Extension and Advisory Services in Serbia
In Serbia, agricultural extension service started its initial development during the 50’s of the lastcentury (Zivkovic et al., 2009). Nowadays, the network of professional extension services in Serbia isⒸISERD135

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coordinated by the Institute for Application of Science in Agriculture (IASA), which is under the
auspices of the Ministry of Science. About 251 field advisors and administration staff (40.3% female)are employed in 34 regional offices by the Serbian public extension. AEAS in Serbia is composed bypublic extension and private advisory services. Donor projects (i.e. World Bank project) provided
extension agents with a sound base of technical (and partially methodological) knowledge and skills,
before being left on their own (FAO, 2011).
Support for public services in agriculture (e.g.extension service, veterinary and phytosanitary
services, etc.) is provided but the share of dedicated agricultural budgetary funds is small. Within thegeneral services sector, the greatest proportion of funds is directed to extension services or to financing
agricultural expert service (34-56 %) (Bogdanov and Bozić, 2010).
The majority of the field staff within the system is agricultural experts from the former system. In
fact, the majority of advisors are age over 40 years. This strengthens two biases: the strong focus that isstill directed towards production techniques and the relative preference given to large farms withrespect to small and medium holdings (FAO, 2011). Serbian public agricultural extension is mainly
addressed to commercial family farms and lesser attention is paid to small producers. Usually, small
producers must go by themselves to ask for advice (Petrović et al., 2009). Approach to farm families isbased mainly on individual contacts (sample farmer). Direct display methods include demonstration
plots, field visits, field days and workshops. Extension workers also organise public lectures. Different
media are used in information dissemination such as leaflets, brochures, Radio, TV and the internet.
The ISAA went a step ahead regarding provision of trainings to advisors in the few last years, as
during the period 2010-2014 more than 40 practical training courses were organized for extension
agents related to farm management, modern technologies in agricultural production, skill development,
EU integration, and environment protection and sustainable development.
Public extension has an intensive cooperation with applied research institutions. Moreover,extension stations apply research by themselves. There is a regular cooperation with universities
especially in Vojvodina autonomous province, where a university department developed andimplements an extension monitoring system.
Extension agents provideinformation and advice on national subsidy programs. Nevertheless,according to FAO (2011), the Serbian public extension provides farmers and rural dwellers only
partially with information and support on rural and agriculture tourism. However, Serbian extension
services have recently started providing information on national and international rural development
programs by the initiation of Rural Development Offices (RDOs). RDOs and individual municipal
advisors provide also support for the initiation of associations.
Monitoring of advisory work is fairly advanced in Serbia, having a considerable database onadvisors’ activities, farmers’ needs and the results of on-farm research. However, monitoring is more
about examining the activities of advisors than documenting the impacts of advisory work. There aremany best practices that can be shared with neighbouring countries (FAO, 2011). Nevertheless,
Serbian extension services face many problems in dealing with producers, as well as finance andmanagement problems, overload with non-extension activities, low number of extension agents, etc.
(Petrović et al., 2009).
Extension Services in Montenegro
Montenegro has a relatively simple agricultural education, extension, research, and information system
institutional set up. The main institution is the Biotechnical Institute that is the main partner of the
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) (EC, 2011). The Biotechnical Institute islegally a part of the University of Montenegro and is financed from its budget, but the Livestock
Selection Service (LSS) and Plant Production Extension Service (PPES) are financed by the MARD
(EC, 2011; MARD, 2012).
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LSS was initiated in 2000 and has performed four main groups of activities: animal breeding andherd improvement program, advisory services, realization of support measures to farmers, and carryingout AMIS program - Agrarian Market Information System (MARD, 2012; Markovic and Bovic, 2010).
The first activity, animal breeding and herd improvement program, takes a major part of working time(Markovic and Bovic, 2010). PPES, established in 2003, aims at improving crops yield and products
quality. It performs three main activities: advisory services, implementation of support measures, andcarrying out of AMIS program (EC, 2011; MARD, 2012). At present it has 19 staff (academics ortechnicians) who work in seven regional centres (Bar, Bijelo Polje, Berane, Cetinje, Herceg Novi,
Niksic, and Podgorica).
PPES uses different methods in everyday work. It gives expert advice and recommendations tofarmers in the field, and organizes educative trainings, round tables, workshops, and seminars on
different topics in plant production (MARD, 2012). It also provides general information on its website
and publishes flyers and brochures (FAO, 2011). Radio and TV programs are also used to inform
farmers. Up-to-date market information is provided to the national radio station to be broadcast in aweekly program (Stanisic Vukota-Director of PPES, pers. commun.).
Common challenges for both LSS and PPES is the implementation of indicators of performanceand monitoring and the improvement of the extension staff’s abilities and expertise through regulartrainings (Markovic and Bovic, 2010). Moreover, the advisory services have sporadic cooperation with
NGOs, private extension providers and farmers’ associations but good cooperation with research
centres, input suppliers, and processors (FAO, 2011).
There is in every Montenegrin municipality a kind of advisory service for agriculture which
engages one or more employees (Stanisic V., pers. commun.). However, this service inherited from theprevious system many burdens and its function is more focused on office work than to giving advices
directly to farmers (Markovic and Bovic, 2010).
Montenegrin advisory services provide a limited support for the diversification of rural
livelihoods and income generating activities. Moreover, they also support social capital building andstrengthening activities. This is exemplified by the support for the initiation of processing andmarketing associations (Stanisic V., pers. commun.).
Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services: User Needs and Challenges Ahead
According to the field survey, the need for agricultural advisory services is very high among thesurveyed rural households in Bosnia (50.0%), Montenegro (60.4%), and Serbia (31.7%). Despite quitea high need, very few respondents (12.0%) in Bosnia use services provided by extension while inMontenegro (41.5%) and Serbia (37.5%); the share of households that in reality use services is higher.
In all the three countries, needed help is mainly related to advices about market and its players,veterinarian service, cooperatives membership benefits, marketing, plant protection, fruit pruning,products’ processing, legal-economic advices, animal husbandry, tillage operations, and manure use,etc. The majority of those who need help are agricultural households while mixed ones need less help
and non-agricultural households do not need any help.
Public extension services in the WB in general and in BMS in particular are strongly focused on
production techniques, while farm management, markets and marketing, regional rural development
and the promotion of producer organizations are only partially served. Extension agents are only able
to thinly cover the areas of farm economy and farm development planning. Rural development is not
systematically supported by the public AEAS due to an overload of work, and to the general lack ofknowledge (on projects and programs) and skills (on group facilitation and group management) (FAO,
2011). In fact, advice on rural development is generally restricted to the activities of some motivatedadvisors in the public service, as well as to NGOs, private service providers, and donor projects dealing
with rural development.
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AEAS must be flexible, user-driven, and focused on local problems. Both public and private
extension resources should be fully used; accountability to clients increased and more responsibilities
transferred to the private sector. Linkages between AEAS and public stakeholders, as well as researchand education institutions dealing with ARD should be strengthened. Agricultural education, training
and research systems should be strengthened as well. It is essential that the research system engages
universities, private sector research, and civil societies and stimulate the scaling-up of innovations(World Bank, 2008). Research needs to be more integrated into the agricultural sector transformation
by moving from agricultural research and development to Agricultural Research for Development(AR4D). The agricultural education and training system needs to adapt and to meet the new dynamics
of agricultural innovation. Education institutes have to offer more relevant subject matters for
agricultural and rural innovation (Daane, 2010).
CONCLUSIONAEAS are back on the agenda and widely recognized as critical to rural development. Rural areas
diversity in BMS, as well as the increasing diversification of the rural economy represents a challenge
for agricultural advisory services. Advisors use many group and individual extension methods andmedia. Moreover, advisory services face many financial, management and technical problems. AEAS
is largely focused on crop and animal production, while rural development is only partially served. In
fact, public extension agents provide only partial information for rural development and rural
livelihoods diversification.
Higher attention should be paid to supporting extension and advisory services in BMS to allow
them to fully assume their role in the promotion of rural innovation, diversification, multi functionality
and sustainability.It is necessary to develop a pluralistic, participatory, bottom-up, decentralized,
farmer-led, and market-driven advisory system. The involvement of other actors in the rural extension
work is crucial if the system is to keep up with rural people’s expectations and to meet their needs. The
programme for continuous training of field advisors should be strengthened and upgraded, especially in
Bosnia and Montenegro.
The need for supporting agricultural advisory services is significant in BMS. It is truly essential in
the time of institutional weakness of the sector that the technical and technological unpreparedness offarmers and rural people should meet complex requirements associated with the policy reform as it isneeded to align the ARD policy and practice in BMS with the European acquis. Moreover, wellperforming AEAS is a conditio sine qua no for achieving sustainable agricultural and ruraldevelopment.
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