ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the effectiveness of institutional agricultural technology systems (IATS) in relation to four criteria: integration, relevance, responsiveness and adoption. It deals with the external factors which inhibit integration, relevance and responsiveness, and which deflect attention from adoption. The chapter focuses on two major sets of factors: those arising from historical institutional legacies, and those related to the contemporary sodo-political structures of most low-income countries. Four groups of people can exert forces which might lead to better integrated and more effective IATS: national policy makers, external donor agencies, farmers’ organizations and commercial firms. The “classic” extension organization in a patron-client society is poor at promoting integration with research. Under default conditions, the part of the IATS that is oriented toward the rural majority tends to be fractured rather than integrated, and its components have no incentive to coalesce. Forces related to the international environment have a mixed impact on national IATS.
