Extension comes to life again

Here you have, we believe, everything you wanted to know about new trends in agricultural training in one highly readable book. The compilers of Training for Agricultural Development 1997-1998, the latest in a biennial series, have produced an exemplary collection of 13 papers from leading innovators and communicators around the world. Among the experiences described are curriculum development ('from margin to mainstream') in Africa, communication in Jamaica and Latin America, the work of female extension agents in Honduras, gender analysis in extension in Ethiopia, and village concept projects in Ghana. The book is open, communicative, lively, and participatory, inviting readers to submit papers for the next edition in 2000. It also has a good gender balance among its authors, who include the pathbreaking Sylvia Balit, former head of the FAO Communication for Development Group, and Maria Protz of Jamaica's Mekweseh Communication, an artist in writing the way people talk. After all the bruises suffered by the extension community in recent years, this book will put the spring back into the step of any extension worker worth her (or his) salt. Training for Agricultural Development 1997-1998. FAO. 1998. 178 pp. ISBN 92 5 104182 2.$28.00, e 26.90 See FAO reference elsewhere in this section for address.Training for Agricultural Development 1997-1998. FAO. 1998. 178 pp. ISBN 92 5 104182 2.$28.00, e 26.90 See FAO reference elsewhere in this section for address