Integrated Extension and Advisory Services for Agricultural Diversification: Lessons from the ‘Rupantar’ Project in the Eastern Gangetic Plains
Agricultural diversification is a critical strategy for improving farmers’ income, strengthening food security, and building resilience to climate challenges. Rupantar project, implemented across the Eastern Gangetic Plains in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, delivers integrated advisory services that support smallholder farmers in adopting sustainable and diversified farming systems. Its experience offers practical, actionable lessons for agricultural development in the region.
In the Good Practice Note on Agriculture Extension in South Asia, Bhuvana Narayanarao (Consultant, Social Sciences, CIMMYT) and Ravi Nandi (Agricultural Economist and Innovation System Scientist, CIMMYT-Bangladesh) highlight Rupantar’s systems-based approach to enabling livelihood diversification among smallholders.
Their insights show that successful diversification requires context-sensitive, participatory, and well-coordinated processes that connect farmers with services, knowledge, and markets.
Lessons Learned:
Train field staff to facilitate processes, not just surveys; strong situation analysis ensures context‑fit actions.
Pre‑consult women, smallholders, and landless farmers to ensure their priorities are not overridden in mixed‑stakeholder settings.
Map service providers and markets 3-6 months before the season; promote only practices with confirmed inputs and services.
Treat women’s barriers as both logistical (timing, venue, transport) and social; group composition and facilitator sensitivity matter as much as the message.
Build rapid mid‑season feedback loops for adaptive decisions, not end-of‑project evaluation.
Use visible demonstrations and field‑based learning to turn advice into trusted action.
Apply participatory pathway design so farmers, government, and NGOs jointly decide what to scale.
Offer multiple pathway options so landless, smallholders, and women have viable entry points.
Avoid technology‑push without context, one‑size‑fits‑all designs, advice without services, tokenistic consultations, one‑season thinking, and counting only training numbers instead of system‑level change.
These lessons show how targeted advisory support can enable smallholders to diversify successfully and improve their livelihoods.