Farm management and extension in smallholder agriculture: Part 2—Appropriate farm management skills and their use in extension

Abstract

In Part 1 of this paper it was argued that farm management had a potential role in facilitating farmers' and extension workers' communication about the adoption and management of technical innovations. The second part addresses the main constraint inhibiting the development of this role: the lack of appropriate farm management tools suitable for use by extension workers advising smallholder farmers. Management decisions are analysed in terms of a theory of human problem-solving in order to show that decision rules may provide a basis for developing formal management techniques more appropriate to smallholder agriculture. Smallholder farm systems in northern Malawi are described and their management modelled using sets of decision rules in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of these rules as management tools. The concluding section discusses briefly some of the implications of adopting decision rules as management and communication aids in extension and research.