BY CHAP PHAN
OPINION
Rural (Agricultural) Extension Service involves deliberate
use of communication of information to help people from rural area make good
decisions concerning farming activities. Extension is a service or system which
assists farmer through educational procedures in improving farming methods and
techniques, increasing production efficiency and income, which enhances level
of living and have positive impact in lifting social and educational standards
of the whole country.
South Sudan National Bureau of Statistics shows that 83
percent of Southern Sudanese resides in rural area and about 4.13 million of
South Sudanese lives below the poverty line which mean that 51 percent of
Southern Sudanese live on less than $ 1.25 per day. Also, 78 percent of
Southern Sudanese depend on crop farming or animal husbandry as their primary
source of livelihood (SSNBS, 2009). These statistics say a lot about the need
for smart public policy discussion, and this paper seek to offer one major public
policy that have potential to have huge impact on ordinary Southern Sudanese'
lives. In this article I discusses that Rural Extension Service offers the best
pathway for increasing and maintaining long-term agricultural productivity in
South Sudan.
If the Cush nation wants to increases productivity in
agriculture, investment in Rural Extension Services offers the best sustainable
solution for agricultural productivity. Agriculture services have been reported
to have substantial returns on agricultural productivity in different countries
throughout the world i.e. Singapore, South Korea, its model that had worked and
should works for South Sudan. There are no unique paths for South Sudan to move
from an agriculture-based to an urbanized and into high-income countries
without increasing agriculture productivity. Given the high youths unemployment
in South Sudan, investment in agricultural sector will stimulates rural
development and generates employment opportunities for the urban people as
well, and most of all, it will increase a sustainable food production.
South Sudan has great potential for expanding and
developing the agricultural sector. The country is well endowed with the basic
agriculture essentials; about 90 percent of the land is arable land and the
longest river, the Nile, goes through the heart of South Sudan. According to
the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, 2012), only about 3.6 percent of
available land was under cultivation between 2005 and 2011. Many Southern
Sudanese still relied on imported food from Kenya, Uganda and North Sudan
despites the fact that South Sudan has comparative advantage in term of arable
land and water supply then those importing countries.
The first-order impact for Rural Extension Service is the
obvious increases in agriculture productivity, which benefits urban dwellers as
well as rural populations. Increases in agricultural productivity benefit the
poor directly through increases in production and also benefits the urban
dwellers through reduction in food prices. That is, rural poor will expand
their production process and productivity gains will induce lower food prices,
which are direct benefits to the poor populations. Rural Extension Services
improves production for small farmers due to better access to information and
farming techniques that would be generated by the Rural Extension Services. The
first increase in agricultural productivity will stems from rural famer's
production by brings the land to production. The second-order impact is that
Rural Extension Service will enable small farmers to realize and promotes
technological progress and therefore localizes the technology. This is the
major reason for supporting Rural Extension service; the benefit of localizing
technology would put South Sudan at greater advantage over other African
countries. Adopting and localizes technology that fits the local conditions
need huge human and institutional capacity, and Rural Extension Service offers
the best pathway for localizing technology in South Sudan.
The main position of this paper is that South Sudan should
adopt Rural Extension Service because it is the best pathway for increasing
sustainable agricultural productivity, (the reader should observed the emphasis
on sustainable productivity). Equally important, this paper focuses on role of
learning to learn, the role of capability building and institutions for local
conditions. That is, the needs of "learning what one is good at
producing." This paper emphasize the importance of identifying the key challenge,
which is the process and need of transforming foreign technology into local
technology that is conductive to local conditions. What South Sudan requires is
a localized technology that meets the condition of the area and promoting Rural
Extension Services increases the chance of realizing that. Whether a country
followed "Labor-intensive products or natural-resource based model"
most techniques used in the advanced countries requires "tacit"
codification before it usage and lack of capacities can delay specialization
process. I am emphasizing that there is role for domestic tinkering in process
of adopting successful foreign technology and this can be achieves better
through Rural Extension Service. Lack of agricultural productivity in Africa is
connected to the difficulties of importing technology "off-the-shelf and
localizing it for local conditions and South Sudan can learn from past mistakes
(the advantage of leaning form other countries' mistakes), we should adopt a
proactive approach to development.
Thus for this paper the term rural extension services is
use as a proxy for technology because usefulness of rural extension service is
to help brings technology to the rural area, technology as used in the text
does not imply just machine either. Technology here refer to adaptation process
that enable the person to use technology, inherent or acquired capability
(skills) possessed by people and/or institutions which enables them to convert
available information into desired outputs. Also, the term technological capacity
building use here is a dynamic and progressive process in which human and
institutional capability is developed and sustained for communities and nations
in order to benefit from economic interconnections within the country or global
system (Stiglitz, 1987).
1.1
The basic framework
Being good at producing a particular good/service more
cheaply (Comparative Advantage) entails elements of search and involves
uncertainty to all countries, many countries does not know beforehand what they
are good at producing, and every country have to make an effort to discover
their comparative advantage which requires investment. In addition, importing
foreign technology "off-the shelf" entails significant costs because
successful local adaptation requires considerable domestic tinkering; there are
costs associated with importing the technology, and costs associated with
applying it to local conditions which requires capabilities, human and
institution capabilities (mukand and Rodrik, 2003). South Sudan as a nation lacks
both human and institutional capabilities that can help builds local
agriculture technology, that's the main reason why agricultural productivity
had not changed much since 2005 in South Sudan. Agricultural sector in South
Sudan have huge potential for economic capacity to produce enough food for the
growing population and possibly for the whole region, but that potential of
agriculture productivity is constraints due to lack of progress in knowledge
and skill in agricultural methods. The underlining problem is lack of
investment and capabilities that would enable average Southern Sudanese to
specialize in agriculture production.
Economic theories regarding development path and growth
have converged to recognize that economic growth requires foreign technology.
Developing countries can benefits from technology discovery from the advanced
countries, but only if they applied the technology to the local conditions so
that technology can finds roots. History shows that advanced countries
discovered their comparative advantage by searching for solutions within their
country and using foreign technology as a reference tool. It's my position that
a country, South Sudan in particular, can discover its own comparative
advantage, South Sudan can finds it comparativeness by making effort-investment
toward that end, and this has been problem for many African countries, South
Sudan should heavily invest in agricultural sector given it huge advantage in
arable land and water endowments.
2.1
Absorbing Imported technology
Currently South Sudan suffers from two important and
distinctive inefficiencies, the country lack investment in agricultural sector,
and this has resulted in lack of entrepreneurship, which can retard
specialization. That is, rural farmers provide essential human resources of
entrepreneurs; farmers allocate their time and use farm products based on
incentive structural. Average Southern Sudanese farmers had not had chances to
exploits their comparative advantage because the government did not provides
accurate protection (security) in case of Unity State (Mayom county), Jonglei,
and Upper Nile states; and because the government did not make investment
toward agricultural sector in case of other seven states. . In other words,
technical change in agriculture, which is the major sources of increased in
productivity in the developed countries, has not been transfers successfully to
South Sudan because small farmers did not a chance to learn and use/absorbs it
in their respective conditions. Inefficiencies in government policies reduce
the economic contribution that agricultural sector is capable of making. It's
common for many African governments to discriminate against Agriculture Service
in favor of urban population. The discrimination is rationalized on the ground
that agriculture is inherently backward and that it have little economic
contribution toward economic development. The truth is that agriculture growth
is the foundation of sustainable economic growth. Juba should prioritized
agricultural sector if it wants to attain a practical economic progress.
I have emphasized the importance of leaning to learn and
desire to localize the nature of learning-local technology. The point is that
entrepreneurs are essential in research, entrepreneurships are important; they
are the one who can localize technology if given the right incentive to do so.
Innovative and entrepreneurship desires reflect set of mental attitudes and
social conventions that seek out alternative ways of thinking and performing.
The importance of social innovations and entrepreneurships factor are
comparable to the technological factors; both have important development
strategies and implications. In other words, if learning what a country is good
at producing requires an investment and government fails to provide incentive
for those activities; those activities may well be neglected. When I was in
Juba this January I observed that majority of young people are routinely
engaged in cards game and have no income generating activities, which is a common
trend from a well neglected Mayom town to well-populated and crowded Juba, yet
the government officials seem to wonder why there is high crime in Juba and
high insubordination in many small part of the country. Many young people
abandoned rural area in hope of finding meaningful job in the urban area only
to realize that they cannot finds a job. Most young people in South Sudan, the
possible entrepreneurs, are seeking job in "modern sector" and
agricultural sector is neglected. The best solution is to stop movements of
rural population into urban area, which can only be induce by investment on
rural area, hence the need for Rural Extension Service. In short, Technical
possibilities are favorable, but the economic incentives that are required for
farmers in South Sudan to realize this potential are not there.
Agriculture is not desirable career choices for many
elites and establishment of Rural Extension Services would stimulates interest
from the community and this can captures the interest of the rural young's
people. Investing on Rural Extension Service will help bridge the skills and
knowledge necessary for the exercise of the agricultural as profession,
instilling the a sense of social importance of the work, and securing
recognition and importance of agriculture as an occupation. Achieving a proper
balance investment between agriculture and other branches of economic activity
will encourage entry of young persons into the various branches of agriculture
in sufficient numbers; this will closed the gap between technical developments
affecting agricultural production and their use in practice. General
improvement in rural livelihoods and the promotion of greater satisfaction in
agricultural productivity will induce technology progress at local level.
History shows that advancement of a country depends on how
it prioritizes and strategizes it resources endowments. South Sudan as a
country is relatively rich in natural resources, but poor in skilled labor.
Although the country has comparative advantage in term of leaning form other
countries' mistakes, it has no capacity for both human and institutional
development. This author believes that industrialization cannot be realized
until structural changes are put in place and rural agriculture extension
researches are critical for building capacity and institutional level. Most
advanced countries established institutions and enevireoment that enabled their
citizens to collaborate and build capacity among the community of actors. One
of important role a government can play is to recognize the importance of good
policies. It's well documented that rapid economic development of the Asia
Tiger countries in the latter part of the 20th century has been attributed
largely to their deliberate policy on capacity building through investment in
human capital and institutional building. Development in Southeast Asia was
promoted through systematic and deliberate policies directed at capacity
building both human and institutional. The central point is that the existing
structural in relationship to institutional and capacity building effort does
not support the national ability to engineer social and economic development in
South Sudan. Empirical studies suggest that there is a strong links between
building local capability and the ability to respond to challenges. Having
human and institutional capacity make it possible for a country to adopt
technology that would enable it to localize technology to the conditions of the
country, that's what South Sudan government should promote.
3.1
Government role
So far the agricultural research in South Sudan has being
limited and high priorities seem to have being oriented toward large scale
commercial farms/businesses. The need for a small-scale farmer is great.
Extension service is heavy undertaking and this is because the benefits of
extension are not easily realize; Extension services have high externalities
that are hard to captures in the market place in relative to social benefits.
Therefore, this provides theoretical justification for government subsidies for
the rural extension. The major reason why government should support rural
extension services is that extension services have public good attributions. In
addition, the government should promotes agriculture polices that induce farmers
to change their practices. Providing irrigation system, better water management
system, and providing subsides in form of storage facilities, marketing
facilities, prices support, and flexible credit programs can increase food
production and ensured stable food security.
Having a comparative advantage in a particular economic
sector is a learned and acquired skill, there is a need to develop this
capability in South Sudan and appropriate policy is needed; building the
necessary institutions and structures should take priority. Currently the Cush
nation is technologically backward, the country is still unable or unprepared
to build the institutional/management structures for overcoming their problems.
A policies design that encourages accumulation of technology should take
priority. The promotion of Rural Extension Service is the best instrument that
can fills short and long-run objective for increasing agriculture production in
South Sudan.
4.1
Summary and conclusion
Investment in Rural Extension Services can improve
agricultural productivity and increases farmer income and this will induce a
conductive technological progress environment, which is critical for the
technological subsector in the process of agriculture productivity. The purpose
of rural extension services is to transfers information from global knowledge
based and into localized knowledge based so that it can be useful for the local
farmer conditions. Thus, it is in this context that extension service is
important instrument in spreading knowledge based information that enhances
farmer productivity in South Sudan, extension services generate knowledge in
term of research and that knowledge enhances information concerning agriculture
input, agricultural decision that improves the rural population
welfare-increases productivity in their agriculture activities. Information
about how to use a particular input, and information about timing and market
price are important for small farmers. Rural extension services reduce cost and
improve cost-effectiveness for small farmer in the rural area. The main
position of this paper has been that Rural Extension Services can enable small
farmers to sustained increases in productivity and this in the long-run can
lead to a new technological breakthroughs, which will further economic growth,
and therefore South Sudan government should aggressively adopt and place
policies that favor it. The intention is to direct publicly funded agriculture
research toward the needs of small scale farmer and the poor at large. Indeed,
increase in productivity in agricultural sector is important and rural
extension service should take the appropriate priority. All in all, Development
progress for South Sudan development in the next five years is not a sure
thing, South Sudan needs technological ability, they need to builds capacities
that can sustained the process and ensure effectiveness of technological
adaptation for local conditions.
The
author holds master degree in economics and resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan
USA, he can be reach at
No comments:
Post a Comment