Project title: Geometry of Information flow in Indian Agriculture            

Project leader: Dr. P. Adhiguru

Project team:     -

Background: 

Accurate technical information for agriculture is crucial for raising the productivity and, improving cost efficiency. Multiplicity of sources may provide increased opportunity to farmers to access the technological information. However, the reality of the nature and type of information flow and comparative benefits by different categories of farmers is to be assessed.

Objectives:

1.    To analyze the geometry of information flow across regions and farm categories

2.    To examine the performance of  different information sources

3.    To draw lessons and suggest policy measures for improving farmers’ access to information.

Study area:

All-India NSSO 59^th round (2003) covering 51,770 farming households spread over 6638 villages.

Methodology:

Data analysis in terms of - sources of information, access to information, trial and adoption of information, farm size and agro-climatic regions.

Key findings:

1.    Farmers predominantly depend upon private and informal sources like ‘other progressive farmers’ and ‘input dealers’.

2.    Access to public extension sources like extension workers, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, training programs, study tours low in spite of the fact that public extension plays a greater role in transforming Indian agriculture.

3.    Mass media sources play a considerable role in disseminating information, keeping in mind their low impact on adoption of technologies, there is greater need to supplement these sources by more formal extension channels.

4.    Farmers in coastal agro-eco region followed by rainfed and hill & mountain regions had better information access. In irrigated region, the access to extension worker was the lowest (1.64%). In the case of hill and mountain region, the farmers greatly depend upon mass media channels viz., TV (14.5%) and Radio (21.49%).

Funding agency: NCAP