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AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION IN
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The Setting
The
arrangements for agricultural extension in
The shifting
emphasis of Indian agriculture towards diversification, commercialisation,
sustainability and efficiency has made it necessary for the state extension organisations to critically examine their extension
approaches. DoA in several
states made changes in some of their approaches (
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Shrinking
resource base The land and water resource base for an average farm holding has
declined considerably during the last five decades (Selvarajan
S and Joshi P.K (2000) Socio-economic Policies in Natural Resource
Management, Souvenir, International Conference on Managing Natural Resource
for Sustainable Agricultural Production in the 21st Century, New Delhi.) . The main reason for the increasing resource
degradation is the inappropriate and unscientific use of land and irrigation
water. Degraded lands are either going out of cultivation or are being used
for growing low value crops. Most of the future agricultural growth will have
to come via yield enhancement, (that means more intensive but more
appropriate and scientific use of natural resources) and from rainfed areas, wherein most of the technologies are
knowledge based and need community action. Forming and sustaining farmers'
groups will be crucial in achieving future agricultural growth. |
The changing needs of farmers for
support from agricultural extension
Due to changing face of agriculture, farmers have to make a number
of complex decisions now. Most relevant of them are as follows:
a.
What technological options could be used profitably
in his/her situation keeping in view the potential resource constraints in
terms of land, capital, labour and knowledge?
b.
How to manage the various technologies? (eg:
how to make optimal use of new inputs in his farm?)
c.
How and when to change his farming system? (eg
diversifying from crop production to mixed farming or vegetable or animal
production)
d.
For which type of products, is there a good demand in the market?
e.
What are the quality specifications he should achieve to get good
value for his produce and how to achieve
f.
How, when and where to buy inputs and sell products?
g.
How to make decisions collectively on resource use and marketing?
h.
How to find quickly the most relevant and reliable knowledge and
information?
i.
What are the feasible off-farm income generation options available
for him and how far he could depend on them?
j.
What are going to be the implications for his farming if the input
subsidies are phased out and/or if the trade in agriculture is liberalised? (van den Ban. A.W (1998) Supporting Farmers'
Decision making Process by Agricultural Extension, Journal of Extension
Systems, Vol 14, 55-64).
To make good decisions, farmers need information from different
sources and often need help to integrate them. Farmers are presently receiving
information from extension mainly on technologies generated in research
stations and passed on to extension. The emphasis, even now continues to be on foodgrains, though broadbasing of
agricultural extension (including messages for other crops/ enterprises) is an
accepted philosophy. Moreover the efforts have been confined to the head of
family only, though the outcome of many of the farm decisions is influenced by
members of his family. Many new institutions (private and public) that have
emerged during the last two decades are found to be providing support to
farmers in some of the above areas. However, "their concentration of
manpower and expenditure in specific crops and regions are affecting their
effective outreach to the masses" (Sulaiman, R.V
and V.V. Sadamate(2000) Scope of Privatising Farm
Extension in
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After the
close of the World Bank supported National Agricultural Extension Project (NAEP),
the central support to the state extension services dried up and many state
governments initiated different extension approaches. Rajasthan adopted the
group based approaches to extension and presently the village extension
workers operate mainly through Kisan mandate (group
of 20 farmers). The state has also been encouraging NGOs to participate in
extension activities and has been contracting out some extension activities
to them, particularly in the far flung areas where public extension is comparatively
weak. Different
approaches are also being tried in several projects in specific districts.
For instance, the Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA) model is
presently under way in six selected districts in the country. This is a
bottom-up approach based on Strategic Research and Extension Plans (SREP)
prepared at the district level based on Participatory Rural Appraisal / oroach. Integration of the activities of agricultural and
allied departments and other organisations such as KVKs is expected to be achieved through ATMA at the
District level. Similar approach is also tried under Uttar Pradesh
Diversified Agricultural Support Project (UPDASP). Apart from these, in
several states, various approaches for organising
farmers groups as Self Help Groups, are being tried mainly as part of
external technical assistance to governments/NGOs. Krishi
Vigyan Kendras,
(presently numbering 261) continues to be the main source of training for
farmers and agro-based entrepreneurs at the district level. The need for
making the system broad based, demand driven, and farmer accountable has been
widely recognised. The need for linkages between
other extension providers, prioritising public
interventions, cost-recovery, contracting out services, higher use of mass
media and Information Technology etc are also gaining acceptance. Measures to
achieve many of these are presently under experimentation. |
Linkages
Though
extension has to maintain effective linkages with several systems, only the
Research-Extension linkages capabilities of the KVK and the quality of linkage
have been so far emphasised. However, several
measures to improve this linkage, though adopted, didn't yield positive
results. "Information flow has been mostly top-down" (Macklin. M
(1992) Agricultural Extension in India, World Bank technical paper 190, World
Bank, Washington, D.C ) and "the weak feedback has not resulted
in any fundamental change in the way research priorities are set at the
research stations" (Jha, D and Kandaswamy. A (Eds)
(1994) Decentralising Agricultural Research and
Technology Transfer in
An extension organisation is a knowledge intensive organisation,
which is involved in the production and dissemination of knowledge. Hence the
success of this organisation depends to a large
extent on knowledge "management. A^ major role of its managers is to
ensure that
- it gets relevant knowledge where ever this is
produced,
·
the staff members use their creativity to aquire/develop
new knowledge,
·
all staff members have access to all knowledge which is available
in the organisation,
·
one learns from experience on how to develop more effective
extension methods,
·
there is a social climate which stimulates sharing of
knowledge and a critical analysis of the knowledge developed or used by
colleagues (van den Ban, A.W (1997), Successful agricultural extension agencies
are learning organisations, in R.K.Samanta
and S.K.Arora(eds)
Management of Agricultural Extension in Global Perspective, BRPC, India Ltd,
The most
important challenge for the future extension managers would be the Management
of Knowledge. The success of a farmer in the years to come is going to be
primarily dependent upon his level of knowledge. The real prices of
agricultural products are falling, because knowledge makes it possible to
produce products with less land, labour and other
resources. In many countries, farmers, who are farming at a knowledge level a
good farmer had 10 years ago, have to go out of business because they can no
longer compete with more competent farmers.
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Reforms
To be effective
and to remain relevant in the years to come, the state extension departments
should initiate the following structural reforms in the organisation.
·
Strengthen its understanding on matters with respect to
technology, markets, prices, demand and policies. Departments have to either
recruit specialists or have to hire the services of professionals in these
areas.
·
Recruit better qualified staff - States have to initiate (as
·
Improve social science skills of extension personnel. Apart from
technical skills, "extension personnel needs several social science skills
with respect to need assessment, group formation, negotiation, conflict
resolution, mobilisation, management of CPRs, use of IT, data collection, analysis and
documentation" ( Farrington ,J, Suresh Pal, Rasheed
Sulaiman V(1998) Improving the Effectiveness of
Agricultural Research and Extension in India, Policy Paper 8, NCAP.
·
Increase the allocation for operational expenditure.
"Allocation of operating expenses in State Departments of Agriculture is
around 15% whereas a fully functional extension system should have 30-35% of
its total expenses as operational expenses"( Swanson,B(1996)
Innovations in Technology Dissemination Component of NATP, (Prepared for
Ministry of Agriculture), Delhi, mimeo).
·
Decentralise the operations of the
department and provide flexibility to field level officers to decide
appropriate extension programmes. Initiate activities
for developing Strategic Research and Extension Plans in all the districts to
be followed up with Block level plans.
·
Improve the capabilities of extension managers-Extension managers
need skills to operate effectively in the pluralistic extension environment.
They need to know, how their organisation can do
better or cheaper than other organisations?, how can
it co-operate with other actors in this system to provide all farmers better
knowledge to survive and succeed in a competitive society?; and how to create
the social climate for a successful learning organisation?
The main challenge for an extension manager would be managing the process of
change in extension. A series of training programmes
have to be initiated to provide these skills.
Future
As discussed
earlier, the role of agricultural extension in the next decade should be quite
different from what it was 10 years ago or even now. Its role as a facilitator
of agricultural knowledge system would only increase as more participants from
private sector would get involved in extension. It is likely that input related
extension (seed, fertiliser, machines and chemicals)
would move to private sector in the future. The public sector extension would
still continue to be the major extension provider in most parts of the country
as the private sector alone would not be able to meet even partially the varied
needs of farmers. The ability of the system to perform these roles would
entirely depend on the pace of internal reforms, the system would undergo.
Experience the world over is that it is easy to change farmers than to change
government agencies. Internal reforms are thus going to be the greatest
challenge for the Indian Extension System.
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January,
2000 |
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Rasheed Sulaiman V |
A.W. van den Ban |
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NCAP
has been established by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)
with a view to upgrading agricultural economics research through integration of
economics input in planning, designing, and evaluation of agricultural
research programmes and strengthening the
competence in agricultural policy analysis within the Council. NCAP
Policy Briefs are intended to contribute to debates on important agricultural
policy issues. Opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the Centre. |