Fundamentals of Extension Education

Front Line Demonstration(FLD)

• The main objective is to demonstrate the production potentiality of improved package of various crops under the farmers conditions and resources. The FLD’s are conducted on various major crops of the district viz., sorghum, maize, pigeon pea, castor, paddy etc. the main emphasis was to introduce new crop genotypes along with improved practices and critical inputs which were new and hitherto not adopted by the farmers. However, during FLD’s programme emphasis was given to increase production and productivity of major oil seeds, pulses cereals and other crops keeping in view the importance given to these crops at national level. The Rangareddy district, the mandatory area for the KVK is characterized by rainfed cultivation mostly 87 %. There is considerable area under paddy which is being cultivated by farmers by utilizing the ground water irrigation.
• Before the starting of the season, crop wise meeting are used to be held in the village by which KVK staff gets an opportunity to assess the situation and select demonstrator farmers for each crop. The input requirements are worked out for each participating farmer. Next, preseason training programmes areused to be conducted in the village itself.
• Another way of preparing the farmers for FLD is to intensively visit the corners of village and selecting and spot if any farmer who is interested in the adopting of a particular technology. The selection of a good demonstrator may pose a problem if there is competition among the farmers. The situation arises out of this can be settled by following the set criteria for conducting FLD’s farmer who comes forward voluntarily to join the programmes without expecting any critical inputs are given importance. Another method is to forge functional linkages with line departments like agriculture and NGO’s who helps KVK in extending the FLD in different parts of the district. This is for mutual advantage and farmers will get needed help from different organization at the same time.
• Another aspect of conducting FLD’s is in large numbers in a bigger area spreading over different blocks in the district. This helped the KVK especially in expanding the area under maize crop in a shorter period. The number of FLD’s are more and large number of farmers are participating, the rate of adoption was found to be faster and higher as it happened in case of maize. Due to this the time lag between introduction of technology and its adoption is also proved to be less. However, this can be achieved only if resources are made available to cover a large number of farmers.

Appropriate Technology
In order to demonstrate the potential technologies suitable to cropping system of the KVK operational area and also to achieve the natural goal of increasing oil seeds and pulse production in the country. Attention was given towards the following for educating the farmers.
• Timely supply of quality seed to increase seed replacement ratio.
• Specific management practices with special emphasis on low cost technologies.
• INM with greater emphasis on biofertiliser sulphur
• IPM with botanicals and biopesticides.
• Use of new HYV, use of nutrients, efficient water use, plant protection etc.  
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