The Role of Extension and Advisory Services in Strengthening Farmers’ Innovation Networks to Adapt to Climate Extremes

Md Kamruzzaman, Katherine Anne Daniell, Ataharul Chowdhury and Steven Crimp
Additional contact information
Md Kamruzzaman: Department of Agricultural Extension Education, Sylhet Agricultural University, Sylhet 3100, Bangladesh
Katherine Anne Daniell: Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
Ataharul Chowdhury: School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada
Steven Crimp: Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-21

Abstract: There is anecdotal evidence of the effectiveness of Extension and Advisory Service (EAS) agencies for strengthening innovation networks to adapt to extreme events that impact agricultural production and productivity. In Bangladesh, the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) is responsible for ensuring sustainable rice farming, which is damaged by flash flooding every year. This study investigates how EAS can strengthen farmers’ innovation networks by examining DAE’s efforts to adapt rice cultivation to flash flooding. Using surveys and interviews from farmers affiliated with DAE (DAE-farmers) and farmers independent of DAE (non-DAE farmers), the effectiveness of innovation networks was examined. One of the key findings of this paper is that DAE’s efforts to strengthen the innovation networks of farmers to adapt rice cultivation to flash flooding focused on the facilitation of the agronomic network development. The organization missed the opportunity to enable the harvesting networks’ efficacy. As the harvesting activities are highly exposed to flash flooding, the absence of adequate support from the DAE and timely updates of local weather and flash flooding information indicates that farmers are still at significant risk. This study also shows the value of including both formal (e.g., EAS agencies, research organizations) and informal actors (e.g., relatives, local input dealers) in the innovation network as a way of ensuring diversity of information access.

Keywords: extension and advisory services; climate extremes; flash flooding; innovation networks; rice cultivation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/1941/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/1941/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:1941-:d:497655

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().