General Background

The Socioeconomics and Extension Research Directorate (SEERD) is one of the five research directorates under Tigray Agricultural Research Institute. It is organized into two sub-programs (case teams); Socioeconomic research and Extension Research. The socioeconomic case-team is mandated to conduct different studies related to:

• Technology promotion (demonstration, pre-extension popularization and Scaling) 
• Adoption and impact study
• Gender analysis  
• Agricultural policy and institutional analysis 
• Market research/value chain analysis 
• Extension system analysis 
• Panel data development and analysis: 
• Analysis of natural and environmental resources economics
• production constraints analysis 

The other sub-program/case-team is the Agricultural Extension Research. This sub-program plays the pivotal role in technology promotion and is the outlet for proven agricultural technologies from research to the extension system for their wider application. It basically focuses on behavioral research that related to changing the attitude and perception of the end users on agricultural technologies delivered by research and the extension system. It promotes participatory technology development through empowering farmers and changing the mind set of researchers from the conventional station based to on-farm participatory approach. It demonstrates best performed new agricultural technologies and practices and lay the ground for their large-scale dissemination. Before the technologies are transferred to the formal extension system it is the mandate of the extension research to work of pre-extension popularization and Large-Scale demonstration of technologies there by build confidence on the acceptability of the technologies by the final users. In addition, the Extension research is mandated to undertake studies on Adoption of Agricultural Technologies and practices and their determining factors, evaluation of the effectiveness of awareness creation trainings and their impacts, evaluation of the existing extension service delivery system, identifying and promoting participatory research and development approaches.

The SEERD is also responsible to coordinate multi-stakeholder forums that are crucial to foster integration and partnership of the institute with all concerned stakeholders in the areas of agriculture research and development. It jointly works with different research and development actors on the identification and prioritization of critical economic, social, natural, institutional, and agricultural policy bottlenecks of the agricultural sector and to provide alternative research-based solutions and recommend development interventions that boost the production and productivity of the agricultural sector.

Manpower: The directorate currently has 25 staff members, with 20 of them being MSc holders (4 women), 2 researchers pursuing their post-graduate study and 3 BSc graduates working at 8 research centers in the region.

Thematic (research) areas

• Technology promotion (demonstration, pre-extension popularization and Scaling) 
• Adoption and impact study
• Gender analysis  
• Agricultural policy and institutional analysis 
• Market research/value chain analysis 
• Extension system analysis 
• Panel data development and analysis: 
• Analysis of natural and environmental resources economics
• production constraints analysis 

Brief research achievement

A significant outreach of improved agricultural technologies in crops, livestock, natural resource, and mechanization technologies was revealed by the research directorate in collaboration with different partners and supporters. Particularly, the directorate attained promising results in the areas of promoting proven technologies to wider beneficiaries. During the past years, the research results have been compiled in the form of research papers and extension materials and distributed to a wider audience. In the last ten years, 53 research papers in proceedings and 45 journal articles have been published. The research directorate has made the results of the research publicly available on social media and local and national programs.