Taking Stock and Shaping the Future: Conversations on extension

During the last six years (2013-2019), the Agricultural Extension in South Asia (AESA) Network has served as a platform for collating the voices, insights, concerns, and experiences of people in the extension sphere of South Asia. Diverse professionals shared their concerns on the present and future of Extension and Advisory Services (EAS) in the form of blog conversations for AESA. Together, all of these individuals who are involved, interested and passionate about EAS, discussed ways to move beyond some of the seemingly intransigent problems that are hindering the professionalization of EAS. Nevertheless, these blogs also take the time to celebrate and salute the signs of promising new beginnings. This publication is an effort on our part to compile 100 such conversations on EAS, which were originally published as AESA blogs, starting in February 2013, into this book. Several of our readers have been asking us to assemble all these reflections into a single document so that these are available as a good reference document for a wide spectrum of actors involved in EAS – scholars, practitioners, trainers, faculty, innovation intermediaries, mentors, leaders and managers – all of whom are involved in driving agricultural and rural transformation.