Modern Extension Approaches for Livelihood Improvement for Resource Poor Farmers

Abstract

Indian agriculture sector has an impressive long-term record of taking the country out of serious food shortages despite rapid population increase, given its heavy reliance on the work of its pluralistic extension system. But so far today gap between technology developed/released and the technology disseminated/adopted is wide. Technology Transfer (persuasive paternalistic), Advisory work (persuasive participatory), Human resource development (educational paternalistic) and Facilitation for empowerment (educational participatory) are the four paradigm of extension education. In light of the context and facts our strategy must be requires as targeting the area based all development agencies/agents for similar message/technologies, Strategies must be supplemented by input and ensuring utilization of locally available inputs or resources & efforts starts from low cost or no cost technologies for confidence building of clients. To help meet this challenge, the role of extension is clear - there is a great need for information, ideas, and organization. About 80 percent of the world's extension is publicly funded and delivered by civil servants, providing a diverse range of services to the general population, commercial producers, and disadvantaged target groups through a variety of approaches. The paper discusses some of the innovations, approaches and success stories, and policy changes needed to take the extension systems forward in light of the rapid changes in tone and tenor of technology transfer globally.

Keywords: Agricultural extension, ICTs, Innovative approaches, Modernizing extension

JEL Classification: Q1, Q16, Q18