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Transcript

Hello friends, I am sure you are enjoying the discussions on the innovative extension approaches under this particular platform. In today’s class we will be discussing about the ‘Farming Situation Based Extension’. So this approach of extension is having many deviations from the earlier approaches of extension. And that is how it is emerging as an innovative model for providing the need based extension services for the farming community. When we look at the service providing system. The major challenge for effective involvement of the farmers in the extension and research program is non availability of appropriate information which are needed for the farmers.

So under such circumstances, even after getting the information or the extension services which are making some deliberate efforts to provide information. Farmers are not ready to accept it because it is not suitable to their farming situation. Under such circumstances the efforts that are being made by the public extension agencies includes the first effort that was launched under the project of National Agricultural Research Project, which identified 126 agro-climatic zones. Just to avoid the rejection of the technology by the farming community, they emphasized on development of the technology based on the agro-climatic zones, means the technology which is suitable, which is performing well in a particular agro-climatic zone should be disseminated among that particular farming community. Under such circumstances, so the technologies were developed and for which the institution of the agricultural research stations or the zonal research stations in each and every agro climatic zone was ensured by Ministry of Agriculture.

These institutions may be owned by the State Agricultural Universities or the ICAR research institutions. Or one or the other research institutions must be there in each and every agro-climatic zone. So that was the priority. And these institutions were asked to develop the technology which are suitable for those agro-climatic zones. And the dissemination of the technology was also decided accordingly. So under that situation, the analysis of the major situation of a crop within the given agro-climatic zone was done. Re-synthesis of the technological package of the crop under each crop situation, through a joint effort of researchers and extension as well as the farmers was done. And assessment of the gap of in the adoption of technology and using it as the basis for working out the required extension strategy was done. And this is how the farming situations were identified and the technologies were developed.

Now let us look into the example of one of the experiments that was done in the Mahbubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh on the crop of castor. Now looking into this figure, this table you can easily identify different farming situations that are emerging in a particular agro-climatic zone. Our earlier approach was to develop a technology for an agro-climatic zone. But under one agro-climatic zone there are different situations that what we are identifying. For example the situation number one is as far as the crop of castor is considered is dominated by red headed hairy caterpillar, which is endemic in nature in that field. So this is not a normal field. And it is under rainfed condition. The rainfed condition this situation is emerging. So this is situation number one. The situation number two says that under rainfed condition, the normal field which is free from other problem. That is farming situation number two. The situation number three is suitable for the late sowing condition, under rainfed condition, but dominated by, dominated by red headed hairy caterpillar infestation.

So that is situation number three. The situation number four says that the it is the field which is affected with the root wilt under rainfed condition, which is the sowing time is normal. So that is situation number four. Under situation number five, it is the normally sown crop but under irrigated condition. So these are the five different situations that are existing in the same agro-climatic zone as far as the crop of castor is considered. So we cannot have the blanket recommendation for all these five situations. So that is why keeping these things in the mind, Swaminathan said that. Agricultural research can be done in laboratories, but and experimental fields. But agricultural technologies can be developed only in the fields of the farmers. Try to understand the difference between the agricultural research and the agricultural technologies. You can do research in the laboratories but technologies can only be developed in the fields of the farmers. He says that since the technology has both. Economic and ecological dimensions. Technologies have to be location specific to be ecologically and economically as well as culturally sustainable.

So this is what is the argument of Dr M.S. Swaminathan, which emphasizes on identifying various situations, and developing technologies according to these situations and providing extension support to that. That is what is being emerged as ‘Farming Situation Based Extension’. So the situations what we have seen. So now you look into this table, you can very well understand that how the package of practices are different under different farming situations. The numbers that are mentioned here as 1,2,3,4 and 5 are indicating the farming situations what we identified in our previous table. And accordingly you can see the change in the package of practices. May it be the sowing time, variety that is used. That changes from situation to situation. The seed rate changes from situation to situation. You can observe the 50% difference in the seed rate that is being used as far the space, the difference in spacing under different situations. And the application of the fertilizers under different situations that you can see. And the top dressing, the difference in top dressing that you can see.

So how can we develop the technology based on the situation, meeting out the needs of the farmers. Similarly the infestation of the pest and diseases are also differentin different farming situations, which have been proved under different the farming situations, which were identified in our previous slide. So this particular experiment reveals that tho until and unless we identify the different farming situations, and we provide the package of practices which are suitable to these farming situations. Farmers are not going to accept the technology and the blanket recommendations are not being accepted by the farmers. The gap in adoption that we generally see and we blame the farmers as because they are not educated, because they are traditional and because of that they are not accepting the technologies. But the reasons behind are something different. Like the gap in adoption is due to. It consists of those components of the technological package which require cash investment and which are not being currently adopted by the farmers. And the critical practices, that it consists of the most of the cultural practices, which are not being followed by the farmers and which can normally be implemented through the family labor or the draught power.

To conclude we can say that the ‘farming situation’ based extension concept can be usefully applied in narrowing down the gap in adoption and re-synthesizing the standardized recommendations emanated from the university research by involving farmers, extensionists and researchers. With the involvement of these three stakeholders, we can come out with different recommendations for different farming situations. As much as crop specific and farmer driven technological recommendations can be developed besides an extension strategy to bridge the knowledge and skill gap, can also be framed, thus making the job of extension worker more easy and meaningful. So this is what is the basic emphasis that we can see in Farming Situation Based Extension.

With this coming to end of the discussion on the Farming Based Situation Extension.

Thank You.