3.1 Objectives
3.2 Scope
3.3 Role in Rural Development
3.4 Clientele
The prime objective of aquaculture/fisheries extension is to persuade and help aquafarmers and fishing communities to improve their socioeconomic condition and quality of life by making improvement in their farming practices resulting in increased fish production and income. Once the primary objective at household and community levels is achieved, the overall national development objective of increasing national fish production, is also attained. There has been a general trend for targeting substantial increase in fish production in the successive national development plans of the countries in the region. Though in most instances, the targets appear to have been set for the government, by the government (Fisheries Department), in reality, the targets are fixed for the primary producers of the sector - farmers and fishermen communities. It is the primary producers of the fisheries sector who actually accomplish the target. However, this top down approach deserves revision and warrants active participation of primary producers in the process. It is highly desirable that the primary producers are well informed and involved in the planning process from the very beginning and supported by the Government to enhance their production to achieve the planned national targets. Further, it is also equally important that while providing extension services support to these primary producers for developing their farming practices, utmost care be taken that recommendations suggested are in line with the need, means and ability of individuals and the communities and at the same time these are economically viable and socially acceptable. Only appropriate programme can generate mass participation to achieve national objectives
Further increase in aquaculture production is possible by intensification of aquaculture practices in existing areas and bringing additional areas into its fold especially those which are not used or considered to be unsuitable for agriculture. Aquaculture is still an emerging farming practice. Compared to agriculture and animal husbandry, relatively few small-scale farming households practise aquaculture even in Asia (Edwards and Demaine, 1997). Again major increase in production is likely to come from new entrants as there are enough scope and opportunities in aquaculture to attract the rural farming and resource poor communities. The targeted expansion of aquaculture production will depend upon many factors, including the development of necessary infrastructure and marketing facilities, easy availability of required inputs and perhaps the most important of all these factors is the need for a system of information transfer from the research and development centres to the farming households. However, it requires much more than simple transfer of information and hence the role of extension service is very important. The major task for extension thus becomes to collect the desired information, inform and convince the people about the value of new and better technology packages, make further refinement to suit them and motivate them to adopt it and draw benefit from it.
The fundamental objective of extension is the development of the people where the meaning of development is not restricted to physical and economic aspects. The idea is to help the people to help themselves. Discussing wide range of matters with the people and help them to get a clearer insight into their problems and developing capacity to make them decide how to overcome their problems is the central role of extension. Hence, it is a process which continues over a period of time and not a single and one time activity. It involves changes in the behavior of the clientele, presumably resulting in further improvement in their farming practices, production and income, living condition, social status and confidence. However, fundamental to behavioral changes is to bring change in their attitude and by doing so, extension attempts to make advance from the static situation which usually prevails in traditional rural societies of Asia. Educating and training rural communities to develop/improve their aquaculture skills and capabilities so as to increase their farming efficiency is the core function of aquaculture extension services system. Besides, the service also assists the farmers by providing necessary information on product development, value addition, food safety issues, credit availability, marketing etc. As and where applicable the extension system helps the local communities to organize themselves into formal or informal production/marketing groups and in participatory management of Common Property Resources (CPR). In some countries the system has set example of providing guidance and assistance to the resource poor communities in accessing public/common property resources and their sustainable utilization. Extension services system is also assisting in developing certain guidelines and their implementation for sustainable utilization and management of aquaculture/ fisheries resources.
About 70 to 80% of the Asian population live in villages and majority of them are poor. They live mainly on agriculture and agriculture related activities such as livestock rearing, aquaculture and fisheries, forestry, etc. In general these rural dwellers are resource poor and a sizable population is landless. Their average farm holding size in most of the countries is less than a hectare. Due to the growing family size, pressure is gradually increasing to ensure family food security. Compared to coastal areas and fertile plains, poverty is relatively more pronounced in upland areas of most of the countries in the region. The main source of livelihood among the upland rural communities is rain-fed agriculture. They employ a wide range of production systems in agriculture, agro-forestry, forestry and livestock rearing. The dryland shifting cultivation is more prevalent among most of the upland communities of the region, the sustainability of which is becoming increasingly doubtful.
Rural farming communities in general, in addition to ensuring family food security, are looking increasingly towards cash crops, trade and other complementary activities to generate extra income to improve the quality of their life.
Small-scale rural aquaculture which contributes over 70% to the total aquaculture production, is a potential resource for improving household food security and supplementing family income of the rural poor. Even at a subsistence level, aquaculture provides the much needed animal protein food and substantial cash income from the sale of the surplus crop. Aquaculture in homestead family ponds is also developing as a gender-sensitive family farming practice. A less strenuous and shorter daily labour requirement, close proximity to the homestead, good return on investment and a source of high quality food for the family, makes working in aquaculture acceptable to the women members of farm families. Year-round cropping opportunity and quick return, makes aquaculture a highly acceptable food production system even for the upland communities. As indicated in Table 1 aquaculture offers wide range of culture technologies which could easily be incorporated into the family farming systems to diversify the family food production, spread risk and make more productive use of by-products generated from other farming activities. Low input based systems exclusively depend upon on-farm resources and therefore except for the seed no purchased or extraneous input is required. Fish is a highly nutritious and preferred food item. In most of the Asian countries rice and fish form the daily diet of the people. Because of these qualities, small-scale aquaculture has been accepted as a powerful production option for reducing rural poverty, alleviate cases of malnutrition among children and mothers, empowering women and raising family living standard. Asian small-scale farmers are convinced that fish culture is a cash crop and has the potential for crop diversification and improved earnings. As a result, the number of small-scale aquaculture farmers in Asia is increasing.
Aquaculture extension services have played a significant role in the development of aquaculture, however, a role of greater dimension is expected in the coming years. Most of these new entrants are expected from rural resource poor communities though this group have extremely limited access to information and other support services. At the grass roots level, extension is the most important part of the Aquaculture Support Services as it cut across all other services. Efficient extension services are required to support the existing farmers and the new entrants for effectively promoting equitable and sustainable development of aquaculture that will contribute to overall rural socio-economic life.
It is quite evident that when the support from extension service is not adequate, the small-scale operator has to depend upon external sources for information. In the case of higher input based culture of high valued species like shrimp, it has been experienced that in the absence of effective extension services, most information is volunteered by groups associated with manufacturers and dealers of drugs, chemicals, feed, appliances and equipment. Aggressive marketing efforts by these interest groups often push the farmers towards over-intensification by luring them to short-term profitability at the expense of environmental and social sustainability.
Aquaculture is both a primary source of livelihood and a secondary or supplementary farming activity. At one end there is a huge number of household or small-scale aquaculturists and, at the other end, there are the large or commercial-scale or industrial-scale farmers, corporate groups. The latter group of aquaculturists are highly organized, having access to information and innovations, and enough resources to benefit from improved or new technologies. These groups have also better access to policy-making institutions and are well organized and powerful enough to influence decisions. On the other hand, the small-scale or subsistence level farmers have relatively limited resources and little access to technical innovations. Though the small-scale farmers make up a relatively big number, they are unorganized, with poor level or virtually no education, and have little awareness about environmental implications or regulations. To ensure that the small-scale sector get the benefit, it is desirable that the proven low-cost technologies appropriate for small-scale farmers are extended widely. They are also informed about innovations made in research institutions and helped in drawing benefit from such innovations. In the absence of such support the small -scale farmers will lag behind.
Aquaculture is also practised in common property resources mainly by the resource poor groups. In this context, the task of educating the local communities in the management of resources also becomes an additional responsibility of the extension system. Keeping such functions in view, the extension workers need to be trained in aspects like participatory techniques, group mobilization, participatory resources management etc.
