IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/innchp/978-3-319-67958-7_16.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Role of Extension in Agricultural Technology Transfer: A Critical Review

In: From Agriscience to Agribusiness

Author

Listed:
  • Alex Koutsouris

    (Agricultural University of Athens)

Abstract

Technology transfer (TT), or transfer of technology (TOT), is an integral part of the extension process involving the transfer and spread of technical innovation and know-how to the farming population. The TOT model of the research-extension-farmer linkage is based on the tenets of DOI theory, in particular on a description of the diffusion process as a normal bell-shaped curve with farmers being placed in one of five categories according to their appearance on the curve. However, this linear model has limitations and has been severely criticized on a number of grounds, especially its assumptions about the dissemination process which raise the “issue of equality” and contribute to the “agricultural treadmill.” Furthermore, despite being dominant in agricultural development, on a worldwide basis, TOT has lost utility in understanding the sources of and thus the solutions to highly complex contemporary problems. As a result, alternative proposals have emerged, prominent among which have been systemic approaches such as systems of innovations (SoI). Therefore, there has been a shift of conceptual frameworks in the study of agriculture-related policy, research, technology, and rural development toward agricultural innovation systems (AIS) focusing on processes relevant to innovation networks as formed by heterogeneous actors with particular attention being given to social coordination. In this respect, a new species emerges, that of “intermediaries” (innovation facilitators/brokers) who take an independent systemic role in process facilitation rather than in the production or dissemination of innovation. New systemic extension approaches thus emerge, aiming at the role of co-learning facilitators to stimulate innovations.

Suggested Citation

  • Alex Koutsouris, 2018. "Role of Extension in Agricultural Technology Transfer: A Critical Review," Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management, in: Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes & Elias G. Carayannis & Evangelos Grigoroudis & Stelios Rozakis (ed.), From Agriscience to Agribusiness, pages 337-359, Springer.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:innchp:978-3-319-67958-7_16
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-67958-7_16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nimisha Pandey & Heleen de Coninck & Ambuj D Sagar, 2022. "Beyond technology transfer: Innovation cooperation to advance sustainable development in developing countries," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy and Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(2), March.
    2. Richard Lynch & Maeve Henchion & John J. Hyland & José A. Gutiérrez, 2022. "Creating a Rainbow for Sustainability: The Case of Sustainable Beef," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-24, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:innchp:978-3-319-67958-7_16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.