CHAPTER 4: IMPROVING THE LINK BETWEEN EXTENSION AND RESEARCH 4.01 4.01 An extension system is only as effective as the technology offered. In summing up the relevance of the research on the crops and livestock for women farmers, Baxter (1986) stated that technological developments (especially in varietal and implement improvements) have tended to benefit "men's" tasks and crops more than "women's." As a result, new technologies have not met the needs of many women farmers in Africa.

4.02 To help women more, agricultural research should broaden its thematic scope to include processing, utilization, and storage, and its disciplinary scope to include the social sciences. Agricultural research must also adopt a more collaborative approach to identify the research agenda.

4.03 In her review of research in the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) institutions, Jiggins (1986) concluded that unless the decision-making process in research involved more producers, consumers, workers, traders, and processors, researchers' work would have negative consequences for women. She contended that researchers in the early stages of research ignore the fact that most food in developing countries is processed, preserved, and prepared in rural households by women. Jiggins stated that the record of the International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs) on gender issues has been conservative, with hesitant and cautious exploration stimulated largely by donor-financed initiatives. Moreover, the way the research process is organized and research criteria are derived stands in the path of more substantive efforts (Jiggins 1986). She concluded that the comparative lack of organized research support--especially for crops, stock, and varieties grown by women--and the neglect of women's roles in germplasm conservation and seed selection, all hinder the development of technologies for women's farming activities.

4.04 It is within the national agricultural research systems that the bulk of the research targeting women farmers should be carried out. Present research systems, however, tend to concentrate on products that are exportable or are major items in government statistics. Often these products are grown more by men than by women. Less attention is paid to minor food crops and other products with which women are associated. Moreover, the technologies developed for men farmers may be less appropriate for women farmers, whose objectives and constraints differ.

4.05 To develop the technology to make rural women more productive, research systems must focus more effectively on the needs of female farmers. Identifying a suitable research agenda requires collaboration, and an urderstanding of women farmers' circumstances based on adequate socioeconomie and baseline agricultural data. African governments and the World Bank and other donors are forging stronger link between the generators of technology in research institutions and the disseminators of extension messages. Initiatives are also focusing on the now tenuous links between the research/extension (R/E) system and low-resource farmers. Links between R/E and women farmers are even more fragile, and only now beginning to be highlighted.