The Millennium Declaration was adopted to motivate the international community and provide accountability mechanisms for actions taken to enable millions of poor people to improve their livelihoods. About seventy percent of the MDG’s target groups live in rural areas, particularly in Africa and Asia, and for most of the rural poor, agriculture is a critical component in the successful attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. Even though structural transformations are important in the longer term, more immediate gains in poor household welfare can be achieved through agriculture, which can help the poor overcome some of their critical constraints. Thus a necessary component in meeting the MDGs by 2015 in many parts of the developing world is effective productive agriculture-through its extension component. Agricultural extension in its broadest sense is considered an important instrument to support farmers’ efforts in agricultural development and poverty reduction in a changing world. Extension supports the MDGs in at least three areas-poverty reduction, gender equality, and sustainable environmental management. Extensions role as a facilitator, broker, coach, and even a partner in local rural development platforms and value chains represents an opportunity for rural change, innovation process and rural poverty reduction through its research and empowerment component. Extension messages now consider women farmers, groups and vulnerable individuals in its approach and models to reaching people. There is also urgent need for extension to allocate more resources and effort to educating farmers how to use sustainable natural and resource management practices and to adopt these practices continuously in order to cope with the impact of climatic and environmental change. This paper thus, using mainly literature from the web- discusses how extension functions in reducing poverty, ensuring food security, balancing gender issues and providing skills for sustainable natural resource management
