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BLOG – 75: 50 Publications every extension professional should read

To remain relevant and to support addressing the rapidly evolving challenges in agriculture, extension professionals need to upgrade their competencies. Sreeram Vishnu and Rasheed Sulaiman V have chosen what they think are the 50 best publications every extension professional should read to enhance their knowledge and skills to remain relevant to the changing times.

 

 

Dr. Sreeram Vishnu (srieeram@gmail.com) is research officer with the Center for Research on Innovation and Science Policy (CRISP), Hyderabad 

 

Dr. Rasheed Sulaiman V (rasheed.sulaiman@gmail.com) is Director, CRISP,Hyderabad  

 

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  • Thanks a lot Dear Dr Rasheed Sulaiman & CRISP for this wonderful and very useful compilation. It proves why you/CRISP are different imaginative and innovative from others. In fact, I will share it with all my PG and Ph.D. scholars for getting an insight into the basics as well as advances in Extension discipline. Inclusion of hyperlinks to these publication is like an icing on the cake. It is indeed a New year/ Christmas gift to the extension professionals fraternity in India from you/ Crisp. Keep it up.

  • Great work – relevant, focused and timely. A handy guide to locate and use relevant resources on applied aspects of extension. I hope this compilation will help extension professionals and students to locate and use relevant methods and tools to improve quality of their work. I would suggest to include few texts in cognitive, educational, social and organisational psychology in the list. The core aspect of extension is manifestation of behaviour of stakeholders – be it a farmer, entreprener or policy maker. Every action of extension stakeholder is an outcome of their behaviour change with respect to the people and context – adoption of new technology (farmer); new extension model ( extension worker); new policy ( policy maker) etc. It is very important to understand the human behavioural processes in different contexts – educational, organisational , social, with respect to technology, people and related aspects. We need to understand the ways of modifying behaviour in every context with respect to our objectives. If we wish to develop methods and tools on applied aspects, we need to understand behavioural processes per se, and their interaction with macro and micro climate and their resultant behaviour. The biggest problem is Agricultural social sciences is that we are obsessed with macro and micro climate and resultant behaviour, but failed to focus on the basic human behavioural processes which created these results. My suggestion would be to incorporate these basic sciences as Core courses in the curriculum and applied aspects as optionals.Any one who completed BSc in Agri, horti, veterinary, fishery and allied sciences will be able to understand applied aspects, but may not be able to create a behaviour change unless he or she understand the basic psychological processes. Creating streams at MSc level with Core human behaviour and sociology in first semester, extension main courses in second semester with steam specialisations in the third semester will be a good option.

  • Congratulations to the authors and AESA for this great attempt and mind blowing blog. Hope this blog would surely enrich all the professionals. The youngsters also have a lot to learn from this particular blog..Further, out of curiosity I am also waiting for the list of publications specially for Indian context !!

  • Congratulations to both authors for developing selective list of 50 must publications to read for extensionist. Going through the list, two important concerns emerge in mind- first as shared by Mahesh sir, very few publications are from India. We do have lot of books and materials related to extension available in country but quality may be issue. Second concern is that out of these 50 publications very few are being referred at academic institutions as part of extension teaching and research. There is strong need to expose extension students and young professionals to such quality publications rather than sticking to only 2-3 tradional books. Hope this list will guide all extension professionals about quality publications in different areas of extension. Congrats!!!

  • Extension and Advisory Services (EAS) is a global profession. Everywhere, the practitioners of this profession are looking at most effective and efficient ways to reach rural communities with new knowledge and services and there is a lot to learn from its practice from all countries (especially the developing countries).Every country in this world has some form of pluralistic extension. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), IFAD Rural Development Report, G-20 Agricultural Ministers all talk about strengthening extension and advisory services. Ideally we should be producing extension professionals for the global market, who could work at not only in Indian institutions, but also in international development organisations such as FAO, IFAD, CGIAR Centres;, Regional and Global Development Financial institutions such as Asian Development Bank, World Bank; International NGOs, that operate globally, regionally and nationally. There is a lot of demand for “extension-communication-innovation-impact” expertise in many of these organisations and our curricula is not helping our students to reach these positions. Our students will be able to compete for these positions only if our curricula, education and training catch up the advances in extension science and practice. In India too, extension needs new capacities to deal with the new and evolving set of problems faced by farmers and all the listed publications were chosen to improve our knowledge and understanding on the advances and new perspectives in this field.Almost all publications are downloadable (at least 47 out of 50). This is not a list prescribed for a particular course in a University. But ideally some of these should definitely be a part of the recommended reading list and many are important for practitioners struggling with approaches and tools to address new challenges in the field, in India too.