Vol. 11, Special Issue 3 (2022)

Author(s):
PM Chavan, VS Shirke and PB Kharde

Abstract:
In Indian context, agriculture is the highly important economic sector. Emergence of paid extension services in agriculture is relatively recent phenomenon in India. Many professionals are providing consultancy (free or paid) to the farmers in high value crops such as fruits and flowers, exotic vegetables etc. Consultancy services exist and they advise farmers by visiting their farms. It ensures food and income stability. Maharashtra is the country's largest grape-producing state. The Maharashtra government has proposed establishing an agriculture export zone that would include Nashik, Sangli, Pune, Solapur, Satara, and Ahmednagar districts for exporting table grapes and value-added products like wine in a coordinated manner. The research was carried out in the Nashik district. In the research Seventy-two villages were purposively chosen. A total of 200 farmers were chosen for the study wherein 100 out of those were taking services from private consultancies and rest 100 were not taking any consultancy services. The information was gathered through personal interviews. Majority of the client and non-client farmers were using medium level of sources of information, the main source of information for the client farmers was grape master consultancy. On the other hand, it was found that, the non-client farmers were not seeming to be using information sources to the great extent.