Extension Services Division
The Section's general aim is to educate, inform and persuade farmers, so that they can more actively contribute towards national agricultural production
Vision
To elevate our value creation and service delivery capabilities to better serve the local farming community and our international network, and improve our scale of influence as an Agriculture Department within the SIDS community.
Objectives
The Section's general aim is to educate, inform and persuade farmers, so that they can more actively contribute towards national agricultural production which is part of the government's agricultural policy.
The specific objectives of the Section are:
The Agricultural Extension Section must promote farmer-driven research to ensure that services provided are relevant to farmers' needs. Strategies to be adopted are:
- Strengthen linkages amongst farmers, between extension officers, researchers and farmers.
- Encourage more participation of farmers in the extension-research activities
- Encourage Farmers Association to join in and participate in the research activities.
The Agricultural Extension must promote the best agricultural practices, through the following strategies:
- documenting existing technologies for research
- ensuring strong research-extension-farmer linkages
- realization of appropriate media programme
Extension Section must continuously assess extension service delivery. The strategies are:
- develop and maintain link with local and international organizations to identify the most appropriate approaches
- training of staff in the use of alternative extension approaches.
- review extension existing approaches with the view of assessing their suitability.
Extension Section must ensure continuous capacity building of extension officers, through
- training of agricultural extension workers in areas of group formation and appropriate extension methods to enable them to work more effectively with farmers
- enhancing career development through in-service training, upgrading of skills and development of managerial skills.
- train new recruit agricultural extension workers in IT so that they can be better equipped for delivering a better service.
To continuously stock adequate amounts of quality agricultural inputs and supplies to sustain production.
Principles
The following principle shall guide the implementation of Agricultural Extension work to ensure inclusiveness, ownership, continuity and a balanced value-added for all concerned stakeholders:
- Build on and seek synergies with existing processes, strategies, projects tools and capacities.
- Connect national priorities and implementation approaches
- Apply aggro-ecosystems perspectives to implementation (as appropriate).
- Link short- to medium- and long-term targets.
- Ensure equal participation of concerned stakeholders and the public in planning and implementation processes.
- Provide supportive collaboration across agriculture sectors to fulfill respective roles.
- Give priority to information sharing and public awareness.
- Ensure the continuous allocation of financial resources for agricultural extension services
- Build mechanisms for monitoring, follow-up, evaluation and feedback
The main responsibility of field unit in Agricultural Extension Section is to carry out technical visits, on farmers ‘ farms and advise the farmers, on different aspects of agriculture. These include, but not restricted to, Pest and Diseases management, Nutrient and Water management, Livestock management, beekeeping, book keeping, business plans, loan request. Extension officers also monitor farms for productivity level, and any irregularity.
To encourage farmers adopt new technologies, alongside Crop Research Section, Extension facilitates the carrying out of on-farm trials on farmer’s field and provide appropriate feedback to farmers, through farmers’ field day.
Extension officers are also responsible to motivate farmers to attend capacity building workshops and trainings so as to equip them with knowledge to increase farm production.
The Agricultural Extension section also promotes the best agricultural practices, through realization of appropriate media programme.
The Agricultural store section is responsible to procure and stock adequate amount of agricultural inputs, to ensure farmers have access to affordable and quality inputs and supplies, to sustain local food production. The agricultural store section, is comprised of the main store where bulk of inputs are stored, the Anse Boileau, Valdendor, Union Vale and Amitie stores. To increase access of farmers to inputs, a new retail store will be opened in the compound of the main store at Grand Anse by January 2024 and this will be followed by a Requisite store on La Digue.
The Victoria Market, situated at the heart of Victoria, is the 3rd section of the Division. It provides an outlet for farmers to sell the produce to the general public at a reasonable rental price. It has the objective of ensuring that farmers have a point of sale for their product and consumers have access to a variety of local agricultural produce.
