Farmer's Opinion on the Usefulness of Agro-advisory Services in the NICRA Operated Districts of Odisha

Abstract

Agro Advisory Services (AAS) play a dominant role to minimize crop losses and increase crop production and productivity. AAS provides basic, timely and accurate pre-information of diff erent climate and weather conditions for diff erent crops. With this milieu, National Innovation on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) is operating in fi ve climate vulnerable districts of Odisha. In this study three districts were selected based on the diff erent agroecological situations. Diff erent advisory services like agro-advisory, weather advisory, the usefulness of news letter, farm literature and farm videos. Agro-advisory services were found more than half of the farmers found it highly useful while 20 per cent found it useful. The scenario is much better in NICRA districts in comparison to non-NICRA districts (p=0.006). But in weather advisory, 35 per cent of farmers found it was highly useful while 15.8 per cent of farmers found it was useful. About a quarter (26.7%) of farmers expressed Newsletter is highly useful whereas 21.7 farmers opined it is useful. About 23.3 per cent of farmers found farm literature was highly useful while 25.8 per cent found it useful. Only 10 per cent of farmers opined that farm videos are highly useful whereas 18.3 per cent told it is useful. In the Non-NICRA areas, 33.3 per cent see these services as highly useful or useful. This scenario is signifi cantly better in NICRA areas (p=0.008).