A Discourse Analysis of Postmodern Agricultural Research and Extension Models: An Epistemological Perspectivism

A number of agricultural research and extension models are developed during postmodernism in order to increase the agricultural productivity and improve the livelihoods of farmers in developing countries. The objective of this review paper is to analyze the dynamism of these models following a postmodern epistemological perspectivism. One of the predominant agricultural research and extension models in postmodernism is the Transfer-of-Technology (ToT). It is a typical model for both national and international agricultural research and extension. In this model, all the key research decisions are made by scientists who experiment on research stations or under controlled and simplified conditions in farmers' fields. The resulting agricultural technology is then handed over to the extension services for transfer to passive farmers. This model is a typical positivist and reductionist research of normal science approach, with high input package and top-down extension. It succeeds in the uniform and controlled conditions of the resource rich farmers of the western, but fails to resolve the challenge of farmers in developing countries. Therefore, for many agricultural technologies innovated within the ToT top-down framework, failure rate in developing countries remains high. Meanwhile, this discontent has necessitated the realization of ‘participatory movements’ which consider farmers as key partners in research and extension. Thus, the attendance in the ‘participatory movements’ has become clearly discernible with increasing reputation. These ‘movements’ have progressed collectively as Participatory Research and Development (PRD) with greater sophistication and formalization of theoretical foundations. The PRD model is a methodological and philosophical contextualization to local reality that disdains positivism and reductionism but salutes pluralism and holism. This re-contextualization makes a new claim of empowering farmers. As a result, there is an indication that the ToT model has gradually losing its pre-eminence to the PRD approach in developing countries. Yet, contemporary agricultural research and extension in developing countries are based on a mixture of the ToT and PRD models. Particularly, international agricultural research institutes still hold the strong line of positivism and reductionism. For improving the livelihood of farmers in developing countries, therefore, a consistent attention need to be given to a more participatory, empowering, holistic and pluralistic PRD model that strengthens the agricultural research institutes-researchers-extension systems-farmers linkage.