Land Resource Cards: An Innovative Approach to Empower Farmers for Site-Specific Farm Resource Management

Abstract

The paper investigates an innovative extension approach of generation and distribution ofLand Resource Cards, developed from Land Resource Inventory database, used for site-specific farm resource management in watersheds adopted under World Bank funded Sujala-III project. Extent of reach, satisfaction level and training status of Land Resource Cardsin 12 model micro-watersheds located in different agro-climatic regions of Karnataka witha sample size of 720 farmers was assessed. The Land Resource Cards reached only 18 percent of farmers while 22 per cent of farmers were trained for its utilization. However, 77per cent were satisfied with the information provided and 23 per cent suggested for furtherimprovement in cards for greater utility. The overall farmer’s perception on capacity buildingon land resource cards revealed that they were very useful in farm-level resourcemanagement. Hence, need for replication of similar approach in all database drivenwatersheds to be implemented in the future with adoption of modifications is suggested.

A Scale to Measure Core Competency of Extension Field Functionaries in Land Resource Inventory Based Watersheds

“…The activities involved in the implementation of a watershed are multi-disciplinary and diversified. Further, change in the roles and responsibilities and working KAS has been observed between conventional and databasedriven Land Resource Inventory (LRI) based new generation watersheds (Ravi, 2022), in recent times. LRI watersheds are those developed based on characterization of the nature of land resources, their constraints, inherent potential and suitability for various land-based crop enterprises, and other uses for preparing location-specific watershed plans, using advanced remote-sensing and GIS tools (Hegde, 2018).…”