Role of Private Advisory Services in Agricultural Extension: A Review

Services that make new knowledge available to farmers and assist the farmers to develop their farming and management skills are known as agricultural advisory services..Emergence of paid extension services in agriculture is a recent development, where, professionals have been providing paid consultancy to farmers on technical, especially in high value crops like fruits and flowers.These agri-consultant are mostly retired professors of State Agricultural Universities (SAUs), extension professionals, financial institutions and also provided by Agri-Clinics and Agri-Business Centers (ACABCs) trained by the MANAGE.Agricultural extension and advisory services which were traditionally funded, managed and delivered by the public sector are in transitory phase worldwide. They are under increased pressure to reform their purpose as the nature of the agricultural and rural sectors is changing leading to demand for broader support from extension and advisory services. Technology transfer system has to become more demand driven and responsive to farmers need and helping farmers to organize themselves as well as linking them to markets. The advisory services has to also support other pertinent areas besides production such as value addition, market access, trade, agribusiness management, natural resource management, gender, climate change etc. It is in this light that the private advisory services are complementing, supplementing or even replacing the public advisory s