EVALUATING AGRICULTURAL ADVISORY WORK IN IRELAND
Authors: KEENAN P. J. 
Published: March 2008

Evaluation of Agricultural Advisory Work in Ireland

The material reported here is based on a study of agricultural advisory work carried out by our Agricultural Advisory Service. This study has fact finding as well as evaluational aspects.

The purpose of the study is:

1. to provide information on the extent to which farmers are putting into farm practice the more important recommendations of the Advisory Service;

2. to enquire into the effect of certain characteristics which advisers believe to determine farmers' adoption of improved farming practices;

3. to enquire into farmers' information seeking habits, the flow of agricultural information between farmers and farmers' habits in this regard.

Over and above the purposes specifically stated, a primary consideration in undertaking this kind of study was to introduce the Advisory Service to some of the techniques available for evaluating the effectiveness of advisory programmes.

The need for the study is given by the facts that the Advisory Service, concentrating on the individual and personal approach, could give a great deal of attention to a relatively small proportion of the farming population only and that there is a feeling that the acceptance of an appreciable number of improved farm practices has been confined to a rather small group. Does this mean that information is not diffusing from the Service's ‘clientele’ to the majority of the farmers ? In developing his programme the adviser's guide lines have been his own and his colleagues' experience and their common sense. If a reservoir of systematically acquired information on advisory programmes and methods were available, advisory work could be carried out more effectively. In‐service Training Courses, which must draw on educational and communicational theory for its subject matter, are more effective when systematic studies are available to show the applicability of theory to advisory work.

In the study, the sample unit is the local community and 30 such communities selected at random make up the study population of 2,373 farm managers. A questionnaire was used to collect the information and this was administered by the local agricultural adviser.

Each farmer was given a practice adoption score. The practices were the ones deemed most important by the adviser and each practice was weighted according to its importance in the adviser's programme.

The study shows that 40% of farmers are in fairly close contact with the Advisory Service. Some 10% of farmers have adopted all or nearly all the important farm practices recommended, while almost one half of farmers are practising a very small number or none. Forty per cent of the study population were adjudged to have a farm plan to guide them as against 60% who were guided by traditional farming routine.

The farmers with high adoption scores are younger, better educated, acquired managership at an earlier age and have bigger farms. The Advisory Service is justified in devoting considerable time in providing and or promoting Agricultural Education and promoting General Education. The Advisory Service might be more effective if it was more selective in those to whom it channelled information directly.