Power, Interests and the Extension of Sustainable Agriculture

Abstract

ESEARCH INTO AGRICULTURAL extension has been guided by theories R which either take an individualistic perspective or express social relationships in terms of communication. Such models have been deemed inadequate as they fail to take sufficient account of power relations. Calls for the extension of sustainable agriculture bring this problem to the fore, as the nature of sustainability remains contested and its definition and application are persistent sources of conflict. Meanings of sustainability are negotiated in political arenas and the institutions of everyday life. The outcomes of such contests have real impacts on all people involved in agriculture. While this has been recognized, the relevance of power to the social relations implicated in extension has started to be addressed theoretically. This demands application of concepts which will help to clarify power relationships. Central among those concepts is the notion of interests.While participatory models of agricultural research and extension, including those which acknowledge power relations, have moved extension away from 'top-down' approaches, those so far developed take insufficient account of farmers' interests. This argument is offered on the grounds that extension theory and practice which do not account for the interests of all participants remain unaware of its impacts. Merely giving farmers' perspectives recognition by offering them participation in research and extension will not ensure that their interests are addressed. This failure arises because participation is inherently a political process in which the interests of some participants may be served more readily than others. The concept of extension is itself contested among those who implicitly define the interests of its participants. A model of extension which is effective for both farmers and researchers will only be developed when interests are conceptualized in ways which enable their identification and entry into extension discourse. This paper seeks to provide an approach to 98 Gray, Dunn and Phillips analysing farmers' interests to guide the development of participatory extension practice, based largely on Australian research and the need to foster sustainable agricultural practices. While addressing the specification of the interests of farmers, the paper acknowledges that other parties involved in extension, primarily researchers, extension agents and agents of agribusiness, also have interests in the extension relationship. Extension and powerThe problematic nature of the social relationships implied in extension became apparent to theorists in the 1980s as earlier models were found to be failing to facilitate the rapid diffusion of the innovative products of scientific research. The entry of a diverse range of interest groups into the extension discourse during a period of rapid social and economic change, accompanied by rising awareness of environmental problems, had made the extension relationship more complex than a matter of concern for just farmers, extension agents and...

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