Externally provided information use process in Indian agriculture and impact on productivity

Abstract

Indian farmers are increasingly challenged by climate change, globalized domestic markets, advanced technologies and multitude of policies while taking production and marketing related decisions. One way to assist farmers in this respect is to develop a vibrant agricultural extension/information system to facilitate them to take appropriate decisions. So far availability of accurate, reliable, timely, comprehensive, cost effective information in an understandable way has been a distant reality for Indian farmers. A variety of Government efforts such as having extension workers in villages, setting up of Krishi Vigyan Kendras at district level, setting up of Agricultural Technology Management Agency, use of mass media and ICT have had limited success and are yet to make any significant impact on availability of demand based comprehensive quality information to farmers. A review of agricultural extension system conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute finds a number of weaknesses in the current system of agricultural extension provided by the farmers (Glendenning, Babu, Asenso-Okyere, 2010) . Public extension service suffers from severe shortage of staff and the information provided is mainly related to transfer of technologies and on-farm activities. While ATMA model is conceptually sound there are serious difficulties of implementation through the existing mode of organization.