Knowledge Assessment of Stakeholders on Market-Led Extension in Telangana, India

Market-led-extension works with various aspects on quality, consumer’s preference, latest knowledge of market, market analysis, market intelligence, processing, value addition, Use of ICTs and Appropriate Extension Approaches and other marketing information on regular basis. These can helps the farmers to realize high returns for their produce, minimize the production costs, reduce the post-harvest loses and improve the product value and marketability. Hence, the extension should focus on end-to-end basis. Keeping this in view a study conducted on analyzing the knowledge level of stakeholder about Market led Extension. This study confined to an Ex-post-facto and Exploratory research designs. Northern Telangana Zone was selected purposively for current study, Out of the twelve districts that make up the Northern Telangana zone, seven districts were chosen at random. Two APMCs were randomly chosen from each of the seven districts; hence, a total of 14 APMCs were chosen for the current study. A random selection of two villages was made from each district, taking into account the district's APMC location. Based on where the APMCs were located in the specific district, the respondents were chosen at random. Stakeholder knowledge regarding Market Led Extension, the majority of farmers (54.28%) reported having low knowledge, the majority of APMC office bearers (48.57%) reported having medium knowledge, the majority of AOs (57.14%) reported having medium knowledge, and the majority of traders (40.00%) reported having medium knowledge. To bring their knowledge level into higher categories the department of Agriculture and Agricultural marketing should conduct the capacity building activities through training programmes, exposure visits taken up at regular intervals and can also conduct the collaborative development programmes with the Agricultural marketing department, KVKs, DAATTCs, SAUs in the villages. There is a need to motivate the Traders to perform market led extension activities at APMCs for this the Government of Telangana, Department of Agricultural Marketing and Department of Agriculture should conduct need based training's on market oriented agriculture and market led extension activities to the Traders.