Abstract

RENDON-MEDEL, Roberto; DIAZ-JOSE, Julio; HERNANDEZ-HERNANDEZ, Belén  and  CAMACHO-VILLA, Tania Carolina. Models of intermediation in agricultural extensio. Rev. Mex. Cienc. Agríc [online]. 2015, vol.6, n.1, pp.139-150. ISSN 2007-0934.

Agricultural extension service is one of the main links between production and use of knowledge for agriculture in developing countries. In literature, have been identified agents that act as intermediaries to link two or more players who are not connected. However, few studies address the mechanisms that this uses to intervene and even less, a typology that characterizes and integrates them. Applying the concept of innovation intermediaries, the purpose of this article was to unravel the mechanisms used by agricultural extension to articulate offer and demand for knowledge and innovation. For this, four case studies that used different extension strategies were analyzed. The results indicate that a characterization of intermediates is performed by the level of participation in decision-making of farmers, the strategy that intermediaries use to orchestrate the process of managing innovation, the production system context in which intervene and if the intermediary is oriented toward offer, demand or play a neutral role in this process. From this, intermediaries were classified as managers, mediators, facilitators and implementers, concluding that each of them require resources, support and evaluation of results separately in the process of extension.

Keywords : agricultural extension; innovation intermediaries; network orchestration.