Growth in the agricultural sector implies better food security, higher levels of returns for people employed in agriculture and allied industries, and lower levels of poverty. We explore the role of delivery of research-based information to farmers in increasing the rate of growth of agriculture.
Agricultural information delivery was originally conceptualised for transferring the latest agricultural technology, information, and knowledge to farmers in order to enhance agricultural productivity and/or returns from agriculture and to provide feedback to public and private agricultural research agencies. To achieve these objectives, agricultural information delivery initiatives were launched at significant scale in India at the time of the Green Revolution. The initiatives were very successful in increasing agricultural productivity for several crops.
However, agricultural information delivery in India has significantly changed since it was first introduced in the 1950s. Now, agricultural information delivery is not intended just to achieve goals of higher crop productivity but also to help ecological sustainability, income enhancement and equitable growth in regions of varied agro-ecology and among farmers with different resource endowments. There have also been important changes in communication technology and involvement of public sector in delivering information to farmers, bringing in a larger number of technological and funding options for delivering information to farmers.
However, access to agricultural information is lower now than ever before. In this study, we present a review of literature on the history and current state of agricultural information delivery in India, the reasons for low access to agricultural information and the problems faced by farmers due to the low access. We find that larger resource allocation and more research on impact of information delivery on agriculture is needed for revival of robust institutional mechanisms for agricultural information delivery.
