Dr Amadou Sowe, permanent secretary, Department of State for Agriculture has said that the Agricultural Reform Policy dictates the extension workers to provide technical support to the entire farming community and to contribute significantly towards uplifting the socio-economic wellbeing of The Gambian farmers.

Dr Amadou Sowe made this remark during the launching ceremony of a certificate course in equine husbandry at the Gambia College's School of Agriculture, in Brikama.

In his speech, Dr Sowe emphasised that for the effective transfer of technology to farmers, it is essential that the extension workers responsible for technology transfer, be well trained.

Permanent Secretary Sowe stressed that the poor training of agricultural extension staff has been part of the problems of relative ineffectiveness of extension delivery in the field and that the changes in training are deemed as part of the answers to these problems.

" It has been observed that most field-level extension staff lack the requisite knowledge, skills and attitudes required to work in today's complex and rapidly changing agricultural environments," Dr Sowe said. He further reiterated that the challenge is to provide responsive training programmes that will enable extension staff to develop the competencies needed to enable them to use participatory, reflective and active learning process with farmers.

According to him, agricultural colleges have been successful in providing the basic training in agriculture for good extension work, but these extension wokers have been assigned to work with the farming population with little knowledge of the basic attitudes and customs of the people.

"They lack the training in adult education methods and rural sociology," Permanent Secretary Sowe stated.

He further expounded that the extension workers need to have skills, knowledge and attitudes that will bring about the behavioural changes and performances that are needed in the work place.

Dr Sowe asserted that the majority of farmers in the Gambia are smallholders who primarily manage a "holistic" farming system with different levels of interactions.

"Therefore, an integrated and unified approach to extension organisation and delivery would serve them more adequately," he stated.

Dr Sowe then emphassied that some other emerging issues in agriculture and rural development, such as environmental protection and sustainable productivity, also require a holistic approach to the management and delivery of agricultural services.

According to him, these are among some of the rationale for the current restructuring of the agricultural sector into a National Agricultural Development Agency (NADA).

"The main aim is to consolidate the previous achievements in the agricultural sector and to facilitate further improvement on the extension delivery system, by providing a polyvalent approach in a unified extension service," he explained.

Dr Sowe underscored that to be very effective, the new unified extension services have to adopt threefold strategies to work with the farmers which are: recognising what the farmers are doing and supporting them, stabilising and enhancing of the productive physical environment and to help farmers through introducing new technologies for increased production.

Dr Sowe concluded that these new approaches to extension delivery will put emphasis on developing and disseminating technologies and recommended practices to both individual farmers and farmer groups or organisations.