Shaping the Future of Dairy Extension by Harnessing E-Extension Tools and Techniques

Abstract

The dairy sector in India is solely dependent on small and marginal farmers who are mostly traditional in nature and rarely follow scientifically recommended practices, their capacity to mobilize resources required to absorb the latest technologies developed by research institutions is limited. The dairy extension activities in India are sporadic and do not meet the requirements of a vast majority of farmers, institutional sources of information are poorly harnessed for accessing information on improved dairy husbandry practices. Farmers have no option but to depend on public extension services. Though several actors are present in the livestock sector, there is very little extension in India, the net result is that the knowledge of the livestock owners on scientific management of livestock is very poor. To address these issues, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are assuming a greater role in the extension work. e-Extension/virtual extension can deliver extension information and advisory services with greater ease, more rapidly and with higher accuracy and covers a large number of target clientele. Mass media including internet has become one of the most important sources for disseminating useful information to dairy farmers in India. Social media is yet another ICT based tool, which once used purely for entertainment, has great potential to be used for knowledge sharing and promotes co-learning among farmers. Through these tools farming community can learn and share information in multiple ways in form of texts, photos, pictures, audio, audio-visuals and web links with the abilities of reaching large number of people. The recent developments like; increase in mobile subscriptions in the last decade have also increased the use of web based services and applications like web portals and mobile apps, computing and networking technologies provide new ways of technology transfer. Thus initiatives of e extension/virtual extension services have opens up new frontier for overall dairy development in India. It can transform the Indian dairy sector to a profitable endeavour by reducing the information unevenness and time lag to meet the demand of doubling the dairy farmer's income by 2021–22. This paper discusses the various modern e-Extension tools and techniques that can be harnessed for dairy development. The major areas covered are Government initiatives, applications/designs/portals, ICT based tools, major ICT based programs, applications of mobile phones and social media for shaping the future of dairy extension in India.