Agricultural extension is the application of scientific research and new knowledge to agricultural practices through farmer education. The field of ‘extension’ now encompasses a wider range of communication and learning activities organized for rural people by educators from different disciplines, including agriculture, agricultural marketing, health, and business studies.
Extension practitioners can be found throughout the world, usually working for government agencies. They are represented by several professional organizations, networks, and extension journals.
Agricultural extension agencies in developing countries receive large amounts of support from international development organizations such as the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.
Typical Role of an Extension Worker
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Importance
Extension Worker using Technology
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- Extension services use democratic methods in educating the farmers.
- It helps in the adoption of innovations.
- It also helps in studying and solving the rural problems.
- Extension increases farm yields and improves the standard of living of farmers
- It makes good communities better and progressive.
- Extension contributes to national development programs.
Scope
It includes all activities of rural development. So, extension programs’ should be dynamic and flexible. The areas indicating the scope of Extension are listed below:
- Increasing efficiency in agricultural production.
- Increasing efficiency in marketing, distribution, and utilization of agricultural inputs and outputs
- Conservation, development, and use of natural resources.
- Proper farm and home management
- Better family living.
- Youth development.
- Leadership development.
- Community and rural development.
- Improving public affairs for all-round development.
Objectives
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- To raise the standard of living of the rural people by helping them in the right use of their resources.
- To help in planning and implementing the family and village plans for increasing production in various occupations.
- To provide facilities for better family living.
Specific Objectives
- To provide knowledge and help for better management of farms and increase incomes.
- To encourage the farmers to grow his own food, eat well, and live well.
- To promote better social, natural recreational intellectual and spiritual file among the people.
- To help rural families in a better appreciation of SWOT in the village.
- To open new opportunities for developing the talents and leadership of rural people.
- Proud of their occupation
- Independent in thinking.
- Constructive in outlook.
- Capable, efficient, and self-reliant in character.
Extension Education
The term ”Extension Education” was first introduced in 1873 by Cambridge University in England to describe a particular system dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge to rural people where they lived and worked. Within a short time, the idea had spread to other parts of Britain, Europe, and North America. Modern extension began in Dublin, Ireland in 1847 with Lord Clarendon’s itinerant instructors during the great famine. It expanded in Germany in the 1850s, through the itinerant agricultural teachers Wanderlehrer and later in the USA via the cooperative extension system authorized by the Smith-Lever Act in 1914.
Extension Education is a science which deals with the creation, transmission, and application of knowledge designed to bring about planned changes in the behavior-complex of people, with a view to helping them live better by learning the ways of improving their vocations, enterprises, and institutions.
Extension Teaching Methods
Extension Teaching Methods may be defined as the devices used to create situations in which communication can take place between the instructor and the learner or Teacher and student or Extension worker and the rural people.
6 Main Steps in Extension Teaching | Extension
Step # 1. Attention: The first step in extension teaching is to make the people aware of new ideas and practices.
Step # 2. Interest: Once the people have come to know of the new idea, the next step is to stimulate their interest
Step # 3. Desire
Step # 4. Conviction
Step # 5. Action
Step # 6. Satisfaction
Extension Methods.
Extension methods comprise the communication techniques between extension workers and target groups. To facilitate farmers’ decisions whether or not and how to adopt fish farming. the problems to be solved. Generally speaking, mass media help extension agents to reach large numbers of farmers simultaneously.
Extension uses democratic methods in educating the farmers. Extension Helps in the adoption of innovations. Extension helps in studying and solving the rural problems. Extension increases farm yields and improves the standard of living of farmers.
Features of Extension Education:
(i) It is informal education.
(ii) The teacher or extension worker starts with practical first and thereafter theoretical aspects are to be touched i.e. First Practical then theory.
(iii) There is no fixed curriculum or course of study.
Agricultural extension officers are intermediaries between research and farmers. They operate as facilitators and communicators, helping farmers in their decision-making and ensuring that appropriate knowledge is implemented to obtain the best results with regard to sustainable production and general rural development. They also have the ability to transfer agricultural technology and innovation among the farmers. An agriculture extension officer is the main responsible person to expand all these knowledge, information, technology to the farmers.
Goals of Agricultural Extension Education
(1) To increase the net income of farmers by more production and proper marketing system.
(2) To raise the standard of living of rural people.
(3) Development of rural areas.
REFERENCES
www.google.com/m?q=agricultural+extension+article&client=ms-opera-mobile&channel=news&espv=1
www.fao.org/3/t0060e/T0060E03.htm
http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/content/
www.ifpri.org/topic/agricultural-entension
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Written by Oluwole Olujinmi