12
Farmers’ Extension Practice and
Technology Adaptation: Agricultural
Revolution in 17th–19th-Century Britain^1
Jules Pretty
Introduction
In the late 20th century agriculture faces enormous challenges. Production in
industrial and green revolution agriculture is now close to or above levels that can
be sustained by the natural resource base. Yet the demand for food and non-food
products will grow as populations expand, so further increasing the pressure on
natural resources. Agriculture expands into hitherto uncultivated forests, grass-
lands and wetlands; degrades on-farm resources through erosive and environmen-
tally damaging practices; and transfers some of the costs of production off the farm
to other sectors of the environment and economy (Barbier, 1989; Pretty, 1990a;
Conway and Pretty, 1991).
The prospects would appear to be bleak. The growing food requirements will
have to be met, at least in part, through improvements to agriculture in the
resource-poor regions of the world. But farming households in these regions have
poor access to external resources in the form of credit and nutrient and pest control
inputs, are poorly served by rural roads and other infrastructure, and are rarely
adequately supported by research and extension services. Where extension does
reach them, the approach has been to attempt the transfer of technologies proven
to work on research stations rather than on farmers’ fields. New technologies rarely
spread beyond the large farmers, and the aggregate impact remains small (Mullen,
1989; Russell et al, 1989; Pretty, 1990b).
However, in recent years increasing numbers of agricultural development
schemes or projects have demonstrated that agricultural production can be improved
in resource-poor regions through the adoption of technologies that maximize the use
Reprinted from Agriculture and Human Values, VIII, 1991, pp132–148, Farmer’s extension practice
and technology adaptation: Agricultural revolution in 17th–19th century Britain, Pretty J. with kind
permission from Springer Science and Bussiness Media.