Department of Social Science
Agricultural economics, extension education and rural sociology — the question of whether a recommendation is affordable, and whether anyone will adopt it.
The department that asks what a practice costs.
A practice that raises yield can still be the wrong advice. This department studies the economics of it — cost of cultivation, gross and net margin, credit, labour availability, price and market access — and the social side: who in a household decides, what land tenure allows, and why a practice that works is not taken up.
It also carries extension education: how a recommendation is communicated, how training and demonstration are designed and evaluated, and how the questions that come back from the districts are turned into research problems. The department's work is the reason the university's research programme starts with a farmer's problem rather than with a literature gap.
Agricultural economics
Cost of cultivation, margins, credit, price and market access.
Extension education
Communication, training design, demonstration and evaluation.
Rural sociology
Household decisions, tenure, farmer groups and adoption behaviour.
Statistics and survey
Farm survey design, sampling and analysis of adoption data.