Farmers' use of Brandenburg's privatised extension
- Publication Type
- Contribution to conference
- Authors
- Dimter, S., Knierim, A., Nagel, U. J.
- Year of publication
- 2008
- Published in
- Journal of Extension Systems 24
- Page (from - to)
- 30-44
- Conference name
- 8th European IFSA Symposium
- Conference location
- Clermont-Ferrand
In the federal state of Brandenburg, Germany, provision of agricultural extension has been privatised in the early nineties. Since then, public financial support was reduced continuously until ful deletion in 2001. From the change management theory it can be assumed that this organisational transformation has demanded considerable adaptation efforts of the farmers. In 1996, a first empirical evaluation of Brandenburg's extension system had been undertaken revealing farmers' interests and satisfaction with extension's contents and methods (Bokelmann et al., 1996) at that time. In 2006, another empirical study was carried out, focussing on farmers' actual appraisal of the system. In this frame, 69 managers of all types of agricultural holdings in Brandenburg were personally interviewed, combining quantitative and qualitative survey methods. The paper presents selected results of the latter study from the information seeking and processing activities of these farmers. Compared to the findings in 1996, a clear shift from modernisation and restructuring issues towards more general financial and production related subjects can be observed. The perceived need of general extension advice largely exceeds the support actually requested. This is mainly due to financial restrictions. Hence, priority is given to obtaining support when applying for public subsidies. While some farmers appreciate the increased user orientation of extensionists in the privatised system, most farmers tend to diversify their information sources including those of commercial entreprises. Accordingly, an appropriate on-farm knowledge management is a big challenge many farmers have to meet. A broad dissatisfaction is expressed with regard to the information dissemination of the public authorities. Although many respondents complained about these negative effects of the privatisation of Brandenburg’s extension system, young farm managers in particular expressed the wish to accept the challenges and exploit all promising options in the future.