A research investigation on farmer's attitude towards extension services provided by KVK in Uttarakhand, India Bisht Aviral, Kandpal Arpita Sharma* Deptt of Agricultural Communication, College of Ag, GBPUA&T, Pantnagar *Corresponding Author : sharmaarpita615@gmail.com
Online published on 2 February, 2024. Abstract India ranks second worldwide in farm outputs. Agriculture employees more than 50 per cent of the Indian work force and contributed 19.9 per cent to country's GDP. Nearly 83 per cent of Indian population depends on Agriculture and allied enterprises, out of which 52 per cent are getting direct employment from agriculture sector. Thus, agriculture is still the backbone of Indian economy. KVKs are district level farm science centre which can help in speedy transfer of technologies to the farmer's field by building bridge between SAUs/research institutes and farmers. KVKs in Uttarakhand are touching farmers at the grassroots level. Sometimes if the changes among farmers towards adopting new technologies don't come in favour, farmers are easily blamed for not responding to extension programs. So it becomes necessary to find out how the farmers actually perceive the services of KVKs, their level of satisfaction with them and the attitude that the farmers develop towards the services offered by KVKs. Moreover, it is also essential to find out which services and methodologies are perceived to be more effective by the farmers. The present study was conducted in Uttarakhand KVK Chinyalisaur of Uttarkashi district was selected purposively for the study. Two blocks (Chinyalisaur and Dunda) were selected randomly. Four villages were selected (two from each block) through Simple Random Sampling. Total 96 respondents were selected through PPS method. Descriptive research design was used to collect data. Pre tested interview schedule used for data collection, Statistical techniques such as frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, coefficient of correlation and t-test were used to analyze the data for interpretation. The findings of the study revealed that majority of the respondents were male (83.33%), belonged to middle age group (58.33%), had secondary level of education (30.20%), had small size land holding (70.83%), were medium size family (72.91%), and have medium annual income (73.95%). Majority of respondents have medium farming experience (69.79%), had medium level of social participation (57.29%), had medium level of risk orientation (66.66%), and had medium level of mass media exposure (64.59%). Majority of the respondents (65.62%) had neutral attitude towards extension services provided by KVK. Variables like farm experience and social participation are significantly related with the farmers' attitude towards extension services provided by KVK, education and family size are negatively non significantly related with the farmers attitude and age, land holding, annual income, risk orientation and media exposure are positively non significantly related with the farmers attitude towards extension services. The major constraints faced by the respondents in availing the services offered by KVK were lack of transport facility (60.20%), small sized land holdings (56.36%), improper work of SHGs (54.64%), lack of finance (54.55%), inability of women folks to go for on-campus training (49.64%), lack of marketing facility (46.28%), lack of sincerity among the farmers (45.89%) and lack of follow up activities by KVK staff (33.44%). The findings of the study will be useful to extension workers, research workers and administrators as the findings provide an opportunity to have in-depth understanding of the socio-economic, communication and psychological characteristics of farmers that are availing the KVK services and are residing in hills of the Uttarakhand. Top Keywords KVK, Attitude, Agriculture extension, Farmers. Top |