After addressing the issue of Good Agricultural Practices and in response to a request from the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture, the ENPARD South initiative has focused their work and discussions on the reform of the agricultural extension system which was the subject of two workshops in first half of 2016.
The first workshop held on 13 and 14 March 2016 aimed to establish a diagnosis of the current system, based on an analysis of its current funding and partnership modes and to reflect on the new features of agriculture extension as an advisory system, while taking into account the main challenges facing the agriculture sector in Egypt. The second workshop, held on 18 and 19 April 2016 with the same participants, was intended to propose reform possibilities based on the reflections and diagnoses conducted in the previous workshop.
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During the discussions, participants stressed on the need to develop an efficient and modern advisory and extension system for small producers who represent in Egypt 90% of farmers. Indeed, Egyptian agriculture has been facing a duality between large producers, with large financial capacities to contract private companies to benefit from their advice, and small farmers with limited resources who are unable to acquire the same benefits.
And so, these 4 million small Egyptian producers await urgent reforms of the current agricultural extension system to receive an efficient and modernized support that will help them to better manage their operations.
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The evolution of the concept of agricultural extension in recent years in Egypt was also highlighted during the workshops. Previously, the Egyptian agriculture advisory system was mostly focused on enhancing its performance to increase its output. Today, the expectations of agriculture extension services have taken a broader term. For instance, the qualitative dimension of production and compliance with standards and measures to meet national and international requirements has become a necessity as well as the importance of increasing output. In this context, it was highlighted the growing role played by the private sector and NGOs in Egypt to meet these new requirements.
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The participants insisted on the necessity to reform the funding system of the agriculture extension in order to have a well-rounded system and to improve its performance. It has suffered from numerous budget cuts and therefore, some territories and types of farmers, especially small farmers, have been deprived of access to public extension services. In addition, for now, the private sector fails to gain farmers trust and to meet their needs.
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Some proposals to address these issues (organization, funding measures, new missions and new fields of specialty of the agriculture advisory, relations between public and private extension services, marginalized territories and household farming access to advisory services...) were also tackled during those workshop as well as the needs and necessary requirements to reform and modernize the agricultural extension service in order to assist the Ministry in developing its future agriculture strategy.
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The results of the workshops will be further developed and analyzed through a study that will occur over the course of six months in Egypt. A total of six experts will be asked to work on the study, under the coordination of the ENPARD country supervisor. The first part of the study will be based on the results of the workshop of March, to go in depth in the diagnosis. In the second part of the study the experts will go further in identifying the outlines of various reform scenarios that was proposed by the think tank members during the second workshop.
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To further develop this issue of agriculture extension services in Egypt and to have a better understanding of the axes of reform proposed during the workshops, we invite you to read the following documents.
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I/ Situation of the agricultural extension system in Egypt (arabic version)
II/ Proposed reform scenarios of agricultural extension system (arabic version)
