The purpose of this report is to identify strengths, weaknesses and best practice from international experiences with extension. Extension service provision has shifted from ‘push’ based approaches, where research is shared through government extension officers, to ‘pull’ based approaches where extension is based on farmer needs, to ‘innovation systems’ approaches where groups (including farmer groups and or co-operatives) are formed as intermediaries between farmers, market suppliers and buyers, extension workers and researchers. Experiences with these approaches have been mixed, working well in some countries and poorly in others. The most promising approaches appear to be those involving farmer groups and where the role of government agents is more advisory, facilitating opportunities at the local scale by co-ordinating networks between researchers, technical experts and markets, and providing regional co-ordination and records of farmer needs and matching these with research activity.