Access to farming knowledge

On the outskirts of Bhopal. The huge wealth of traditional knowledge is often ignored by policymakers as is the remarkable ability of farmers to adapt and develop cultivation practices according to their own specific situation and experience. A file picture.-PRAKASH/AP

Extension workers continue to disseminate knowledge about practices that may be not only irrelevant but even harmful.

IT is increasingly recognised that one factor in the persistent agrarian crisis is the proliferation of cultivation techniques that are based on inadequate and faulty knowledge being provided to farmers. While the current agrarian crisis in India is hydra-headed and has many causes, the apparent collapse of public extension services has certainly had a role to play. The resulting problems of undesirable or inappropriate choice of cropping pattern, spurious input provision and unnecessary, excessive or improper input use have dramatically added to the costs and risks of cultivation.

The current hotspots where farmers distress is most acute for instance, in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh are all areas where farmers have been encouraged to shift to new crops based on new purchased inputs without being given enough information either on the required cultivation techniques or on the feasibility of such cultivation in the face of changing input and output prices.

It is common to put most of the blame for this on the inadequacies of the public agricultural extension system, which has definitely deteriorated in the past 15 years compared with the 1970s when it was first set up in a systematic way. However, the fault lies not with the extension officers themselves but with Central and State governments, which have systematically reduced public expenditure in this important area over the past decade and half and reduced both the scope and capacity of this system in general.

Extension officers are often inadequately trained to start with and, in almost all States, do not receive continuous training that would keep them up to date with new developments. Their numbers have been reduced to the point that one officer has to cover a vast area and a large population, which is typically not feasible. They are not provided with the minimum requirements of effective functioning, such as transport vehicles and cell phones to enable communication.

It is hardly surprising, in this context, that so few farmers access them for new technology and fewer believe what these hapless extension officers are able to tell them. In many States, it has become evident that new knowledge disseminated by input dealers, who may have a vested interest in promoting particular inputs, has become a source of problems instead of improving cultivation practices. For instance, in Andhra Pradesh, the State governments Commission of Farmers Welfare found in 2004 that unviable or undesirable practices (such as excessive use of chemical pesticide or improper use of certain new transgenic seeds) were actually promoted by input dealers.

A National Sample Survey (NSS) in 2003 found that the majority of farmers did not access any source of information on modern technology in the previous year. Only around 40 per cent of the sample survey accessed such information, and it came dominantly from other farmers, input dealers, radio and television (which includes advertisements by private input suppliers).

A negligible role was played by public agencies. Taken together, the public agencies that are meant to deliver knowledge to farmers that is, agricultural extension workers, government demonstrations and the Krishi Vigyan Kendras had been accessed by only 8.4 per cent of the farmers surveyed. By contrast, other farmers were the largest source of information, with around 17 per cent getting information from them, followed closely by input dealers, who had been accessed by 13 per cent.

Further, only 62 per cent of farmers had actually used the information provided by public agricultural extension workers, compared with 82 per cent for input dealers and 85 per cent for other farmers. In States such as Punjab and Bihar, extension officers advice was acted upon less than 30 per cent of the time compared with more than 80 per cent for input dealers. In many States, even radio, television and newspapers advertisements and all were relied upon more than extension officers.

While the lack of investment in public extension services is a major reason for this, it is also true that the way in which agricultural extension has been designed in India has contributed to the lack of effectiveness of the existing services. There have been many criticisms of the way the public extension system works. It is seen to be driven by technological determinism in a very liner top-down approach, rather than being flexible, allowing for continuous feedback from and interaction with farmers themselves. It has generally functioned as subservient to the agricultural research system, which itself is less designed to respond to local farmers changing priorities and more attuned to international developments. This makes the system less responsive and does not allow it to adapt easily to local situations.

As a result, extension workers are often not aware of the actual problems facing farmers or their changing needs and continue to disseminate knowledge about practices that may be not only irrelevant but even harmful. Many have argued that the most significant drawback of the current system is the implicit assumption that the farmer knows nothing.

So the huge wealth of traditional knowledge is often ignored by policymakers, as is the remarkable ability of farmers to adapt and develop cultivation practices according to their own specific situation and experience. There are several studies citing cases where the departure from such traditional knowledge has created not only greater cultivation risk but also less sustainable practices. These apparent lacunae in the public system have unfortunately left the field open to private dealers, many of whom are interested parties and therefore may not provide the best or most useful information to farmers.

Private input dealers have a basic conflict of interest when it comes to agricultural extension because they are concerned mainly with selling more of their stocks. There are many reports of input dealers providing their otherwise unsold and inferior quality inputs along with their suggestions to the farmers. (This is why in the NSS around half of the farmers reported that the information they received was not good.)

So, along with the other measures that are directed towards the immediate cultivation crisis, such as regulating inputs and providing some support for crop prices, it is essential also to address the issue of ensuring access to the latest and the most relevant knowledge to farmers.

This clearly requires a substantial infusion of additional resources. But it may be just as important to undertake a drastic overhaul of the extension system itself to ensure that it actually listens to farmers.