The real agenda is, of course, how to mobilize taxpayer support for public programs like Feed the Future and the Global Food Security Act to provide the infrastructure, consumer subsidies and extension services that the monopolies demand before making any real investments.
Targeting agricultural research and extension services to poor farmers combined with investments in rural road infrastructure to improve market access appears to generate positive development and poverty alleviation benefits (Bellon et al. 2005; Pattanayak et al. 2003).
Countries need to accelerate research, extension services and market infrastructure, while helping farmers benefit from integrating biodiversity into the landscape, and reduce carbon emissions from soil and deforestation.
Improving market integration for the rural poor may also depend on targeted investments in a range of public services and infrastructure in remote and ecologically fragile regions, such as extension services, roads, communications, protection of property, marketing services and other strategies to improve smallholder accessibility to larger markets (World Bank 2008).
These inputs fall into three general categories: 1) veterinary extension services, 2) health-related infrastructure, and 3) medicines, and reflect livestock production challenges identified in diverse areas of Africa (Schelling et al. 2005; Chengula et al. 2013).
Extension support was captured in two forms, that is access to extension services and distance to the nearest extension office.
TechnoServe developed and is delivering critical agricultural extension services using mobile training units (MTU).
The second is for supporting applications, infrastructure and managed services.
The first, for IT infrastructure and support services, will involve supporting both councils' infrastructure and applications.
