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Lesson 26:Intensive Agricultural Era

Key features

1. Professionalism: Each extension agent is fully and continuously trained to handle one’s particular responsibilities in a professional manner.
2. Single line of command: The extension service must be under a single line of technical and administrative command within the Ministry/Department of Agriculture.
3. Concentration of effort: All extension staff works only on agricultural extension. In training sessions, attention is concentrated on important major points.
4. Time –bound work: Messaged and skills to be taught to farmers in a regular and timely fashion. The village extension worker (VEW) must visit the farmers regularly on a fixed day i.e. once in each fortnight.
5. Filed and farmer orientation: The contact with the farmers must be on a regular basis, on a schedule known to farmers, and with a large number of farmers representing all major farming and socio-economic types.
6. Regular and continuous training: Fortnightly training and monthly workshops are the key means of bringing actual farmer’s problems to the attention of research, of identifying research findings of immediate relevance to farmers and of developing production recommendations that fit specific local conditions.
7. Linkages with research: Seasonal and monthly workshops, joint field visits, training of extension staff and formulation of production recommendations are some of the means by which linkages with research are maintained.