A Paper On Agricultural Economics And Extension

Abstract

The program of extension of agriculture crosses the gap between research laboratories into the field of farmers. The most important element for the promotion of production and income of farmers are agricultural science, education and extension. There is a limited scope of public extension in India and non-extension responsibilities, including distribution of subsidies and inputs, are also burdening the public sector, with little time to take on core growth operations. The article aims to update the Indian farm extension system and suggest ways of improving the Indian extension system. The central extension networks are extremely biased towards crop production in India which disregards allied sectors. Over the years, non-extension jobs stress underemployed extension units. The production was twice or sometimes even third that of crop production in the high-value agriculture sector. Agriculture expansion programs, however, are almost non-organized in these industries. In addition, extension personnel at national level are below the required 1:750 ratio. Without the successful delivery of the agricultural expansion to rural smallholder farmers, the Government's dream of double farmers ' income by 2022 is a difficult task if problems are not effective.