Service economics and public policies for agricultural extension
Résumé
Agricultural policies of numerous states look forward to integrating national agricultural advisory systems (NAAS) so as to reach objectives related to agricultural production as well as to health, environmental protection, etc. Farm advisory services however vary widely according to the country and are undergoing profound reorganization in a context of generalized disengagement of the State on a national scale. Policy-makers are consequently confronted with unexpected problems, primarily due to wide disparities in the level of effectiveness of agricultural extension policies (differences between countries and between categories of farms within the same country). The aim of this paper is to propose a global analytical framework that relies partly on the service economics theory. This work reveals several characteristics of intangible services that are essential for analysing the implications of the transformation of NAAS, particularly: i) specific forms of interaction between service providers and beneficiaries, which constitute the service relationship; ii) the absence of a demand for services which would be autonomous from the supply; and iii) associated with these services, the existence of cumulative effects, either positive (learning, knowledge bases) or negative (exclusions, technological lock-in), which must be analysed for both front and back office activities. In light of this situation, two major problems stand out: i) errors due to a strictly short-term evaluation of the costs and benefits of agricultural extension systems; and ii) the selective effects of agricultural extension service policies based exclusively on uniform support for the demand. These findings highlight the possibility of applying new approaches to the innovation trajectories of NAAS.