Agricultural Show Training Platforms: Review of training effectiveness and transfer of training to farmers’ homesteads

Agricultural shows are a public event conducted annually and serve the purpose, among other things, to promote agricultural knowledge, skills and attitudes to farming communities with a view to improving their farming practices. They facilitate farmers’ access to new information, technologies and innovations presented at the shows. Agricultural shows support different agricultural extension tools disseminating knowledge, technologies and agricultural information. It is, however, disappointing that despite the heavy investments made into agricultural shows, empirical evidence attesting to their relative importance in terms of training and farmer empowerment is lacking. Scientific evidence to confirm the extent to which farmers appreciate agricultural shows, learn from them and transfer learned knowledge and behavior back to the household let alone to the farming community is also lacking. This review responds to the key question “Are agricultural shows suitable for training farmers?”. Following different theories and conceptual frameworks including Kirkpatrick four-level criteria model of Learning Transfer Systems Inventory (LTSI). This paper reviews possible factors contributing to transfer problems that result in constrained training outcomes being transferred following participation in agricultural shows and a research agenda is proposed in response to the key questions posed. Key words: Agricultural shows; farmers; training effectiveness; training evaluation; training transfer