Performance Measurement Model for Agriculture Extension Services for Sustainable Livelihood of the Farmers: Evidences from India

Abstract

Extensive services to agriculture are continuously evolving in less-developed economies like India. With a focus on productivity and farmers' livelihood improvement, Indian agriculture sector has witness a wide range of reforms in past decades. However, the unsustainable, fragmented and decentralized approach has attracted nationwide debate and criticism about the effectiveness of these reforms. In this study, empirically at the micro level, we investigated the impact of the government reforms and initiatives to address current challenges of agricultural extension services in India. We firstly identified the gap between the required demand of small and marginalized farmers from the public extension services and the services supplied to them. Further, based on the identified supply-demand interface, we develop the performance measurement metrics to derive the famers' satisfaction level. This study considered many factors which may be predictors of farmers' requirement from the extension providers. We attempted to understand the interplay of those factors using correlation and factor analysis and then using ordinal logistic regression we regressed the constructs with the farmers' requirement indicator variable to the satisfaction level to derive package appropriateness factors. The farmers' perception of the service parameters are then used within the model to figure out gaps in the requirement of farmers and the services being provided to them by the government organizations within Meghalaya, a State of India.

Evaluating farmers’ perception toward the effectiveness of agricultural extension services in Ghana and Zambia

“…These results, meetings, and demand for service indicators are consistent with farmers’ perception of adopting no-till tillage in South Africa [ 52 ], satisfaction with extension services in Ethiopia [ 51 ], and adaptation to climate change in Ghana [ 59 ]. Equally, Joshi and Narayan [ 73 ] found that the frequency of extension contact is a significant indicator in the performance measurement of agricultural extension in sustainable livelihoods in India.…”

Bamboo for biomass energy production

“…The production from the agriculture industry rises as the global population continues to grow (Verma 2018). Efficiency of the agriculture industry is commonly related to the improvement of livelihood for the rural population (Joshi and Narayan 2019). The agricultural activities include farming and livestock production and have a vital role in improving the nation's economy (Praburaj 2018).…”

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“…The respondent farmers were asked to indicate their agreement or disagreement on a five-point scale; strongly agree (5), agree (4), moderately agree (3), neutral (2) and disagree (1) for each statement. Likert type scales have been used to assess farmer's satisfaction of extension services by several studies (Joshi & Narayan, 2019, Elias et al, 2015, Ganpat et al, 2014. The respondent farmers were also asked to indicate their satisfaction to the overall process of agricultural service provisions initiated by local level governments.…”

“…Over the past ten years, several studies have been undertaken regarding farmers' satisfaction with the public agriculture extension services (Ganpat et al, 2014;Elias et al, 2015;Kassem et al, 2021) and their effectiveness (Debnath et al, 2016;Resnick, 2018;Joshi & Narayan, 2019). Findings of these studies indicated mixed results.…”