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Abstract
The National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) program of Uganda is an innovative public-private
extension service delivery approach, with the goal of increasing market oriented agricultural
production by empowering farmers to demand and control agricultural advisory services. Although initial
evaluations of NAADS have been quite favourable, these evaluations have been primary qualitative in
nature. This study quantifies the initial impacts of NAADS in the districts and sub-counties where the
program was operating by 2005. It is based on descriptive analyses of results of a survey of 116 farmer
groups and 894 farmers in sixteen districts where the program was operating at the time and four districts
where NAADS had not yet begun operating to control for factors that may have contributed to differing
initial conditions among the communities.
Based on observed differences across the NAADS and non-NAADS sub-counties, it appears that
the NAADS program is having substantial positive impacts on the availability and quality of advisory
services provided to farmers, promoting adoption of new crop and livestock enterprises as well improving
adoption and use of modern agricultural production technologies and practices. NAADS also appears to
have promoted greater use of post-harvest technologies and commercial marketing of commodities,
consistent with its mission to promote more commercially-oriented agriculture.
Despite positive effects of NAADS on adoption of improved production technologies and
practices, no significant differences were found in yield growth between NAADS and non-NAADS subcounties
for most crops, reflecting the still low levels of adoption of these technologies even in NAADS
sub-counties, as well as other factors affecting productivity. However, NAADS appears to have helped
farmers to avoid the large declines in farm income that affected most farmers between 2000 and 2004,
due more to encouraging farmers to diversify into profitable new farming enterprises such as groundnuts,
maize and rice than to increases in productivity caused by NAADS.
NAADS appears to be having more success in promoting adoption of improved varieties of crops
and some other yield enhancing technologies than in promoting improved soil fertility management. This
raises concern about the sustainability of productivity increases that may occur, since such increases may
lead to more rapid soil nutrient mining unless comparable success in promoting improved soil fertility
management is achieved. Continued emphasis on improving the market environment, promoting adoption
of more remunerative crop enterprises, and applied agronomic research identifying more effective ways to
profitably combine inorganic and organic soil fertility measures in different crop systems can help to
address this problem.
Shortage of capital and credit facilities was often cited by farmers as a critical constraint facing
them, in addition to scarcity of agricultural inputs, lack of adequate farmland, unfavorable weather
patterns and problems of pests and diseases. These emphasize that the quality of advisory services is not
the only important factor influencing technology adoption and productivity, and the need for
complementary progress in other areas, especially development of the rural financial system.
Implications are drawn for enterprise targeting and ensuring sustainability of improvements in
productivity, as well as for designing and implementing service provision programs in other parts of the
Uganda and in other countries.