Studies on the quality of rural training carried out within two Sino-German projects in the Hebei province showed that the farmers have very little opportunity to attend formal training, and that they have to rely on agricultural input dealers for the information they need even if they do not trust them. The farmers are not satisfied with the training provided by dealers or government technicians but think their own limited knowledge is to blame for insufficient results. The results themselves can be summarised as follows: The main problem of rural training is that only few trainers, coming either from commercial companies or from government organisations, are available, and that their qualification is poor. Most farmers would like to learn more about technologies to improve agricultural production and marketing. Most technicians would like to learn more about advanced technology and training methodology and to have opportunities to share experiences with national and international specialists.

Wang Dehai
Professor College of Humanities and Development Center for Integrated Agricultural Development-CIAD
China Agricultural University - Beijing, China
Wangdh@cau.edu.cn