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The National Sample Survey Organisation, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation released here today the second of the five reports based on the “Situation Assessment Survey of Indian Farmers. The report covers the extent to which the farmers access various sources for getting information on improved farming techniques and the extent to which they use such information.
A randomly drawn sample of 51,770 farmer households spread over 6638 villages across the country was surveyed during January – December 2003. In this survey, any person who possessed some land and was engaged in agricultural activities on any part of that land during the reference year was accepted as a farmer and any household which had at least one farmer member was accepted as a farmer household.
There have been steady attempts since independence to inform and educate farmers through various extension services and mass media like radio, TV, newspapers etc on modern agricultural practices for better agricultural performance. In this survey data were collected to identify the sources from which farmers accessed information on modern technology for farming along with the topic on which information was gathered and the extent to which such information was tried or adopted in practice.
The survey report shows that 40 per cent of farmers in the country accessed one or the other source for getting information related to modern farming. While in Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal over 60 per cent of the farmers contacted some source for farm related information only 15 per cent did so in Rajasthan. In agriculturally developed states like Punjab and Haryana these figures were at 27 and 37 per cent respectively.
The most frequently accessed source was ‘other progressive farmers’ (17 %) followed by the ‘dealer providing inputs’ and ‘radio’ (13 %). TV (9 %), newspapers (7 %) and extension workers (6%) were some of the other important sources. While these were the national averages, farmers in different States showed varying preferences. In Kerala, 38 per cent of farmer households accessing information relied on newspapers while 31 per cent relied on radio. In Jammu & Kashmir, 36 per cent of the farmer households accessing farming information did it from radio and another 30 per cent from TV. In Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Gujarat, the farmer households relied on the ‘input dealers’ and other ‘progressive farmers’ for farming information.
Over 50 per cent of farmers who received farming related information from sources like Radio, TV and Newspapers actually ‘tried’ the information or adopted the recommendations, whereas over 80 % of those who obtained the information from ‘input dealers’ or ‘other progressive farmers’ tried or adopted them. About 65 per cent of farmers who accessed information from extension workers or the ‘Krishi Vigyan Kendra’ actually tried or adopted it.
Among the farmers obtaining information from any source, 96 per cent obtained information on cultivation. As for the type of information on cultivation received by farmer households from any source, 60 per cent were on improved seed variety, 49 per cent on fertilizer application, 24 per cent on plant protection measures. Only 5 per cent of farmers obtained information on animal husbandry related topics and just under 3 per cent of farmers obtained information on fisheries.
Most of the farmers rated the information received as ‘good’ or ‘satisfactory’. Only a small percentage of farmers rated the information received by them as poor.
VKS:LK: (pressnote NSSO)June20
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