A Study of Australian Dairy Extension Strategies and their Application to Pakistani Dairy Farming Sector

Abstract

Extension services in Pakistan focus on the application of technology and practices rather than on farmer needs. This is illustrated by the lack of "dairy-specific" staff employed for dairy extension in Pakistan until the recent concept of the 'White Revolution' (PDDC 2006). Consequently, the private and public sectors in Pakistan "operate competing and overlapping" agricultural extension programs, and when providing extension information to farmers, they tend to favour those who are educated and own land. Given the large number of poorly educated and tenant farmers in Pakistan, there is a need for reorganisation, redesigning and restructuring of dairy extension strategies (Davison et al 2001), particularly for the medium size farm sector that contribute some 7% of the country's milk production. This sector needs to be innovative and embraces technological development and farm management changes in order to improve their production efficiency, which is not happening at present. Such a situation poses a challenge for extension professionals to consider new extension strategies that can be appropriate. The extension strategies used in Australian dairy industry have played an important role for extension professionals in information dissemination of new technology (Jock and Gershon 2004) and have for some time involved participant led and group focused approaches which could possibly be adapted in Pakistan. The aim of this study was to investigate extension strategies employed by professionals (government and private) and dairy farmers operating in N.S.W. and Victoria.