Wish you all a very happy New Year!
The year 2019 has born and we have a task on our hands in helping the Indian farmers to double their income by 2022. Rs. 6426 was the average income of an Indian agricultural household, as reported by the National Sample Survey Organization in 2013. Of this Rs.6426, only Rs 3844 had come from crop cultivation & livestock rearing while the rest had come from wages and non-farm activities. With this in mind, the Doubling the Farmers’ Income (DFI) Committee of Government of India (2017) has identified the following major sources of growth:
The Committee has also remarked that the agricultural extension system at present has been primarily concerned with the first two sources and has offered the following definition for Agricultural Extension:
The role of agricultural extension therefore, needs to align with the current realities faced by the farmers and face the challenges in achieving the goal of doubling the farmers’ income by the year 2022. The DFI report also mentions that Production Oriented Extension, Incomplete Extension (not fulfilling the complete package of production system and the post-production chain of activities) and Service delivery skewed in favour of dominant power structure are some of the challenges the advisory system will be facing while inching towards the target.
I am pleased to announce that JEE has been selected for indexing by CABI for listing in their CAB Abstracts database. This issue of JEE contains articles on diverse topics including sample sizes of postgraduate theses , training needs of farmers & extensionists and job stress experienced by agricultural officers.
Do send your feedback on these papers to editorextension@gmail.com.