Tendances de la vulgarisation dans les pays européens
Authors: Marcellin M. 
Published: October 2009

Trends of extension work in european countries - In most European countries the services responsible for extension-work have evolved in much the same way, though to varying degrees, since the end of the second World War.

The nature of the knowledge required by farmers has gradually changed with the greater structurisation and organisation of farming. From being purely technical information it first became help in decision-making on the level of the individual farm and then, recently, it became help in decision-making on the level of a whole economic field {a production branch or agricultural region). At the same time the extension-worker became first an advisory expert {which is what he still is in many countries) and then « an expert in agricultural development ».

This evolution, which poses many problems for extension-work, may have a profound influence on its organisation. Above all it leads to the need to establish new and closer contacts between agricultural research and extension- work. This new relationship is the result of two requirements:

(a) Research ought to play a part in the perfectioning of the means of analysing and managing these complex socio-economic units that are the field of action of the new form of extension-work — (just as it helped extension- work to perfect the means of managing farm businesses).

(b) In return, research programmes ought to be directly influenced by the technical problems that the development programmes, set up by farmers and extension-workers, bring to light.

The present effort to define the new roles of research and extension-work in agricultural development, could benefit from the countries concerned exchanging views on their experiences.

The writer then lists five wishes he describes as «naive».

(1) Development, though often a necessity, is not an end in itself. But training in personal, individual thought and action in a « conditioning » world has its own intrinsic value and is an end in itself. (2) Complete, honest, objective information is the complement of this form of training.

This kind of information and training would rid development of the need to direct and orientate, which is at present its role.

The ANDA funds ought to be entirely devoted to these two primordial activities.

(3) But the official bodies that are to organise these ac tivities are means and not ends ; they must therefore be constantly challenged and questioned.

Nevertheless those working within these structures m ust not be the victims of. this mobility and adaptability. In this field everything has yet to be invented.

(4) Research, the basis of development, must be a privileged activity. But that also means demanding more of it and challenging it. More should also be demanded of the Universities.

Both must be linked to the real life of the country.

(5) All the above-mentioned bodies must be obliged to obey Golden Rule of pragmatism and the observation of reality.

True progress is a spiral : research-workers, advisors and those implementing their results or advice constantly check each others' work and are a source of intellectual stimulation for each other.