Innovative Approaches to Plant Health and Extension for Smallholders: Plantwise and Beyond.

Lack of access to timely, appropriate and actionable extension advice is a major cause of poor productivity and crop loss for smallholder farmers in developing countries. CABI is addressing this problem through a number of regional and global initiatives. CABI’s Plantwise programme aims to strengthen the capacity of national plant health systems by linking a network of community-based plant health clinics, where farmers who bring samples of their unhealthy plants receive diagnosis and plant health recommendations from trained “plant doctors”. Plantwise clinics currently operate in 31 countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia and catalyse linkages between extension service providers and other actors in a plant health system. In all extension methods involving delivery of information through different media, use of good communication materials that target audiences effectively and are tailored to the method are crucial. The CABI-managed African Soil Health Consortium programme, is developing approaches to support field practitioners as well as scientists to communicate effectively with farmers and other stakeholders through materials such as posters, leaflets, radio and TV slots, cartoon strips, etc.  to share knowledge on how to apply the key principles of soil fertility management to improve crop yields. Radio and mobile systems deliver simpler messages about Good Agriculture Practices and preventive crop and animal healthcare but reach many more farmers.  CABI’s Direct2Farm project with IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL) in India delivers daily vernacular voice messages to about 4 million smallholder farmers. While person-to-person methods are good in terms of intervention, for large scale awareness generation and community sensitization, media such as mobile phones are more powerful and cost effective. Using these various approaches, CABI aims to magnify the scale, quality and effectiveness of agri-extension services, to support food and nutrition security of the rural poor as well as world’s growing population in general.