The effect of agricultural extension services: Date farmers' case in Balochistan, Pakistan

The Government of Pakistan has adopted a policy of providing agricultural extension services to promote agricultural production by disseminating appropriate knowledge and technologies to farmers. Consistent with this national policy, farmers in Balochistan have been provided with extension services by the provincial Department of Agriculture through their extension officials working with the District of Agricultural Extension Department. The required information was collected from a questionnaire survey covering 200 date palm farm households, group discussions, and surveys of key informants in the Panjgur District of Balochistan. Contrary to the policy of providing extension following the participatory approach, the extension in the study area was provided through the age-old top-down approach, with particular field-level extension officials not having much knowledge with regard to addressing date palm specific production problems. Of the farmers who had access to extension services, only half of them had made use of the knowledge/technology provided by extension officials. Overall, the small-scale farmers who used the extension services produced a better yield compared to that of the medium- and large-scale farmers. The linear regression model highlighted five factors that significantly influenced production. Those variables included the total number of date palm trees, the land preparation method recommended by extension officials, frequency of irrigation, expenditure on pesticides as recommended by extension officials, and farm-household income. Overall, farmers in the study area were found to have very poor access to extension services due to a combined effect of several factors. This was partly attributed to institutional constraints, including a very limited number of extension workers and their lack of knowledge on how to address date palm specific problems, such as the Dubas bug, which had infested approximately 90% of trees, and the shortage of irrigation water for around 90% of farmers, which caused a 65% decrease in date production. Conclusions are drawn based on the findings of the analysis, and resulting recommendations have been made for improving the extension services.