Where is an agric extension officer when you need one? Nigeria, whose New Alliance partner is the UK, is allocating 350 000 hectares of land to eight companies.

Obert  Chifamba

In my dark, crazy sense of social responsibility as a journalist, I recently found myself pondering whether today’s agricultural extension workers are still tasked with giving technical advice to farmers or are only doing so at the behest of personal whims and not allegiance to duty.

I was particularly incensed by media reports that some farmers are using Aluminium Phosphide tablets to control rats and the troublesome grain borer yet the chemical is known to be a hazard both to humans and the environment. To me this clearly demonstrated that the farmers were acting in ignorance and desperation, probably without anyone to advise them on how they can safely curb post-harvest and storage losses of grain.

It also seems that farmers in most cases are going it alone.

They are having to make do with their own home-grown solutions, the bulk of which are not fool proof. This may sound harsh but I reckon it’s time we all identify spades as spades.

Extension workers seem to be spending most of their time on their own plots, a school of thought bolstered by the fact that the majority of them, if not all, now have real plots or farms and are no longer staying in the houses Government used to allocate them where there is very little space for serious farming but on their farms.

Of course they can still apply their crucial knowledge for the good of production on their farms too but still do it outside business hours or shiftily.

Principally, there is nothing bad about them owning their own plots or farms but the problem only comes when they devote more of their attention to those plots than on their core business, which is to give technical instruction to farmers and be available most of the time when they are needed.

Yes it is a fact that they are also grossly incapacitated in terms of mobility but in some cases even those farmers staying in the same hood with the extension officers are failing to get their instruction on many issues to do with correct farming practices.

It is disappointing to note that many farmers do not seem to have adequate knowledge on the different agro-ecological regions to which they belong and continue to grow crops or varieties that are not suitable for their respective climates.

Go to Matabeleland region and the stark reality of my claims will confront you. Many farmers are still stuck with maize yet the noises on switching to small grains in such arid climates are growing louder by the day- probably no one is making them within their hearing distance.

Naturally, it should be the duty of extension workers to advise farmers on the varieties and crops to grow and at what stages of the season.

If one was to take a stroll in any direction months after tobacco harvesting and selling, chances are high they would stumble across farmers with fields still containing stalks that should have been removed and destroyed as a way of breaking disease and pest cycles.

In the past the extension officer was treated with a lot of respect and awe and farmers would every year maintain their contour ridges timeously to escape the wrath of the extension workers.

This was so because they (extension workers) would move around checking and even recommending arrests by the police in some cases. Today farmers begrudgingly destroy cotton and tobacco stalks as if they will be doing it for the benefit of the extension workers, a development that points towards an information void or if not that, a clear lack of supervision.

In some cases extension officers dismiss their involvement in such issues claiming it is the duty of the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) to enforce such rules and regulations while they also ignore livestock problems reportedly because the Veterinary Department should be attending to them.

I recently had a chance to talk to some farmers who had come to the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) offices and they told me that extension workers no longer showed the zeal they exuded just a few years ago.

“They now only become regularly visible when they partner non-governmental organisations that come to roll out programmes in their areas of jurisdiction,”retorted one farmer.

The visibly distraught farmer went on to stress that the last time he remembered seeing their extension officer regularly was when he was coming with an NGO partner who was rolling out conservation farming programmes on zero tillage and after that the officer is reportedly citing mobility challenges every time the farmers seek his presence.

The other sad reality is that extension officers are naturally failing to match the increasingly ballooning numbers of farmers and the resultant long list of extension requirements but where they can extend advice they should be there and doing it, period!

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