Assessment of the problems that limit the impact of the public extension service in eastern Guatemala

Abstract: Public rural extension systems play a key role in food security, and even more in a country such as Guatemala, wherein 46.6% of children under five years old suffer malnutrition. In this paper, the results of study aimed at understanding in a systemic way the problems that limit the results and impact of the extension service of the Ministry of Agriculture, Husbandry and Alimentation (Maga) in eastern Guatemala are presented. In this vein, 12 individual interviews and 4 focus groups with Maga’s rural extensionists were conducted in the departments of Chiquimula and Zacapa, which were analyzed based on a codification process carried out with the support of Atlas Ti software. The departments and the research participants for reasons of accessibility and convenience. Results show that the context of politicization and political corruption structure the dynamic of the Maga’s extension system, that the Maga’s extension service is institutionally weak, that there are relevant problems in the area of human resources, and that extension practices have low impact. We recommend generating actions to strengthen the Maga’s extension system, and designing creative strategies to train rural extensionists.