Kisan Call Centre Services to the Farming Community: An Analysis

Kisan Call Centre (KCC) is one of the major initiatives taken up by the Ministry ofAgriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India to provide timely agriculture and allied sector information to the farming community through landline or mobile connection. The service is provided through a toll-free number of 1800-180-1551. Considering the importance of KCC, the research study was conducted in Mahaboobnagar District of Telangana State in India with a sample size of 90 farmers to find out and analyze benefits obtained by the farming community through Kisan Call Centre Services. The results revealed that maximum number of the respondents expressed that KCC advisory was able to save cost of cultivation and in forecasting the pest and disease outbreak in a particular region. The study also showed that farming experience, source of irrigation, contact with extension agencies, participation in extension methods, perception towards mobile phones in farming and innovativeness showed positive and significant relationship with the benefits obtained by respondents

Exploratory study on ITK practices prevailing in Pudukkottai district, Tamil Nadu

India, being a tropical country with fifteen agro ecological zones, is confronted with climate change influences through droughts, floods, cyclones, heat waves, hailstorms, and coastal salinity. The climate change remains a potential challenge to farm sustainability. It also evolved as an impending threat to socio-economic status of rural population. For sustainable farming and climate change resilience, Indigenous Technical Knowledge (ITK) could help growers in broad spectrum. The ITK system though derived out of informal experimentation, it has been developed by the community based on their experiences and incessant improvement over generations. Therefore, identifying and documenting of ITK practices is very much imperative. In this context, an exploratory research study was conducted to document the extent of awareness and community’s perceived benefits of using ITK practices along with the prevailing ITK practices in Pudukkottai district of Tamil Nadu. It was revealed that majority of the respondents’ of about 73% and 74% were aware of crop management practices and crop protection measures respectively. Only one third of the respondents (38%) were familiarised with indigenous poultry management practices. A vast majority of the respondents (75%) perceived considerable reduction in farm expenditures by following ITK practices