Journal of FARM SCIENCES, Vol 34, No 5 (2021)

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Impact of information and communication technology (ICT) based extension system on technology adoption

S. S. DOLLI, GOPAL NAIK

Abstract


Information and communication technology (ICT) is playing vital role in providing agriculture services and there aremore opportunities for its utilization in development of agriculture. There exists wide gap between extension worker andfarmers to the extent of 1:1200 in India (Sulaiman 2015). ICT based extension service can overcome the existing problem of lowccess to extension services by farmers. One such attempt was made through the project on comprehensive AgricultureExtension Services (CABES) which was designed to deliver information to farmers based on the needs of the farmers and fieldcondition on real time bases. An impact assessment of such ICT based extension services was carried out in project villages.Project was implemented in 20 GramPanchayats (GP) with registration of 200 farmers in each GP. Information was deliveredto registered farmers through programme called e-SAP loaded on TAB. RaithMitra a grass root level worker was in charge forone GP and conducted field surveys regularly in farmers’ field. In addition to crop pest diagnosis, best management practices,market information, input etc. were added to the programme. The messages are in text, pictorial and video farms. Thus farmers’access to real time information was very high. The study observed that fifty per cent of the farmers were big farmers and maincrop cultivated were cotton, bengal gram, sorghum and wheat. Farm advisory services through ICT enable services was able todeliver prescriptions to the field problems of farmers as high as 3081to 1181 farmers of bengal gram (2.59 per farmer), whilein case of cotton it was 1041 to 201 farmers (5.08 per farmer). Further it was observed that acceptance and adoption of farmadvisory services was high. It has resulted in incremental yield of 25 per cent in bengal gram and sorghum, while in case ofcotton it was 12.10 per cent.

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