Low and slow adoption of innovative technologies among smallholder farmers in Tunisia is a key agricultural development problem partly related to the existing technology transfer approach used in the country. The objective of this study is to analyse how to design innovative technology transfer strategies more effective in terms of increasing female and male farmers’ adoption of an improved barley variety, ‘Kounouz’, for small ruminant nutrition. A randomised controlled trial method was used with farmers in Tunisia to implement four extension treatments and to evaluate their effects on adoption of Kounouz. Difference-in-difference estimates showed that intensive agricultural trainings can significantly improve adoption of Kounouz. Technical trainings combined with economic and organisational training and female empowerment courses resulted in a higher adoption rate. This finding has important policy implications, because it suggests that ensuring more widespread and equitable adoption of improved technologies may not require changes in the research system, but rather introduction measures that ensure better access for women to gender-sensitive extension programmes given their positive impacts on technology adoption of the household.

While the colonial and contemporary economy of Bengal's Himalayan foothills is most often associated with the tea plantations of Darjeeling and the Dooars, the small farms of nearby Kalimpong were also a key space in which colonial agents and missionaries worked to “settle” the mountainous terrain. Focused on Kalimpong, this article traces the trajectory of one technology of settlement, agricultural extension, from the late 1880s to the early 1940s. It highlights agricultural extension's racialized and gendered politics, as well as its implication in a long-term project that merged material (i.e., food) provision with social reproduction (i.e., childrearing, kin-making). Agricultural extension created a patchwork of relatively biodiverse small farms that historical and contemporary accounts describe as a “green belt”: a socio-ecological outside to the plantation monocultures that dominate the hills. British governors attempted to use non-plantation space for multiple ends. In this sense, their work might be termed “biopolitical,” in that it was geared toward supporting and amplifying the life chances of certain human bodies and certain botanical species. Through a series of experiments, colonial agents made calculated choices about which of these forms of life should be made to flourish, and which might be allowed to perish. Importantly, settlement, as a set of intertwined projects, did not unfold in a coherent or deliberately sequential manner. Settlement was, and continues to be, a sedimentary process.

The effects of agricultural research and extension expenditures on productivity in the United States are estimated during the period 1949-81 using data for ten production regions. The large time-series cross-sectional data base allows the translog production function to be estimated directly. Results from the translog and Cobb-Douglas production functions are compared. The results indicate that use of the Cobb-Douglas production function would overestimate the internal rate of return of agricultural research and extension expenditures in the United States and eight production regions. The total marginal product and internal rate of return for the United States are $8.11 and 66 percent, respectively.

The extension of agroecology requires an alternative extension pedagogy. Agroecology is more than merely the promotion of new technologies or practices, but rather a fresh understanding of how to optimize the configuration of biological and technological components of farming systems informed by ecological principles. This necessarily requires a shift in roles among growers and extensionists so that they can actively participate in networks of social learning. Agro-environmental partnerships have emerged in California as the primary strategy for extending alternative, agroecological knowledge in conventional agriculture. Partnerships are an intentional, multi-year relationship among at least growers, a growers' organization, and one or more scientists to extend agroecological knowledge and protect natural resources through a field-scale demonstration. Partnerships have been particularly successful in perennial crop farming systems, and have played critical roles in helping California's almond and pear growers to reduce organophosphate use by over 75%. This study provides a cross partnership comparison of grower participation in partnerships and proposes a five-part typology to rank this.

The public agricultural research and extension system has provided the foundation for great improvements in U.S. agricultural production. However, our incomparable productivity has brought with it serious problems. These problems have also led to a rapidly changing perception about both agricultural scientists and today's conventional agriculture. Critics are placing high on the agenda of the agricultural research and extension establishment the need for alternative technologies that are more sustainable and less exploitative of our resources. The growing demand for alternative systems offers challenges for every part of the establishment-research and extension administrators, branch station/research center directors, and faculty. These challenges and how they should be met are discussed. Alternative systems will become the conventional agriculture of tomorrow.