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India’s agriculture is comprised of many crops, with the foremost of food staples like cereals, pulses, millets, vegetables and horticultural crops. Nearly 50% of workforce were associated with agriculture and relatively contributes 17-18% to India’s GDP. During the year 2018 India alone produced 284.8 million tonnes of food grains. Even though the statistic is huge, the agriculture sector in India have been consistently declining these days. This would be due to the institutional change of workers from agriculture to non-agricultural sectors.

In India, agriculture crucially depends on the larger workforce due to its available technology and population. Thus, languishing in the participation of agriculture leads to drop in GDP, from 34% in 1983-84, to 17% in 2018-19. To rectify these problems, educating the farmers to adopt improved agricultural practices and technologies government has been associated with ICAR to form KVKs during Fifth Five Year Plan.
            Krishi Vigyan Kendra predominantly act as a Bridge for Knowledge and skill gap among the farmers and updating the source of information to the extension workers. KVK involves conducting Front Line Demonstration, On-Farm Trials, training programmes, Multi-sector support and advisory services to update the knowledge and skill of farmers and capacity building programmes for extension workers. The current research helps to calculate the percentage of training programmes for farmers conducted by KVK of Madurai district.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The study was conducted in the KVK of the Madurai District. KVK operates in thirteen blocks namely Melur, Madurai west, Madurai East, Kottampatti, Alanganallur, Chellampatti, Thiruparankundram, T. Kallupatti, Tirumangalam, Kallikudi, Sedapatti, Usilampatti and Vadipatti. Training programmes are selected as the major sphere of the research. For the better assessment six years (2013-2018) source for data were sorted out. Training registers were collected from the KVK and used as the source for secondary data and training list is created from it. Training programmes were collected according to the date, place and number of people attended the training. Number of trainings conducted during six years and participation of farmers in the training registers. Percentage of trainings and training participation was derived by using the formula.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

The documentation of training programmes reveals the data on trainings conducted by KVK and participation of farmers in training programmes. Sixty-nine on-campus training programmes were conducted, in which 2958 farmers participated in the training. One hundred and five off-campus training programmes were conducted, in which 4246 farmers participated. Totally 174 trainings were conducted and 7204 farmers participated. The training percentage and participation of farmers is presented in the table.

Table 1: Participation of farmers in the training programmes conducted by KVK, Madurai

 

Table1. For the proper evaluation of various training programmes, the number of trainings were sorted grounded on the crop and subject basis. On the whole crop-based trainings secured more than 75 percent (approximately) of the either trainings and participants, while remaining 25 percent (approximately) were secured by subject based trainings. Approaching the crop-based training conducted cereals holds the first place (17.24%) it was predominantly practiced and made the farmers to update and adopt the technologies, whichever diffused through the training programmes. Simultaneously, vegetable crops hold the second place (14.94%), followed by horticultural crops (14.37%) and pulses (13.22%). Subsequently, the minimal number of trainings were conducted in millets (9.77%), commercial crops (3.45%), oil seeds (2.89%) and fodder crops (2.29%).
Amidst the horticultural crop’s trainings (14.37%), the maximum number of trainings have been conducted in fruit crops (6.89%) which was followed by flower crops (5.17%), gardening (1.73%) and medicinal plants (0.58%).
On the other hand, which was grounded on the subject based, a greater number of trainings have been conducted under the entrepreneurship section (9.19%), which was followed a major section named organic farming which holds second place with the percentage of 3.45.  Subsequently, biofertilizer, new varieties and technology, farm mechanization and soil health and management hold third place with equal number of trainings with the percentage of 1.72% correspondingly. Besides, animal husbandry and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) accounted 1.15% and 0.58% respectively.
Similarly, the percentage of participation is also proportionate to the percentage of training conducted, in almost all the aspects. With reference to that, cereals secured a greater number of participants in the training programmes with 18.18 percentage, succeeding by horticultural crops with 13.63 percentage, vegetable crops (13.14%) and pulses (12.48). Other crop-based training programmes attracted very minimal number of participants. Among the horticultural crops, the training based on the fruit crops have received more participants with 6.31%, while flower crops, gardening and medicinal plants have received the number of participants succeeding to that, with the corresponding percentages of 4.52%, 1.96% and 0.84%.
With respect to the subject based training, the pattern of participation is also alike to that of training percentage pattern. Amidst the various sectors, 11.32% of participants have participated in the entrepreneurship programmes. Only 0.77% and 1.59% of them have participated in the training programmes viz ICT and soil management. Organic farming, new varieties and technologies, farm mechanization, animal husbandry, bio-fertilizer and bio-control agents secured 3.48%, 1.99%, 1.82%, 1.82%, 1.45% and 0.55% correspondingly with respect to the training programmes. 

CONCLUSION

Trainings offered by KVK, Madurai in the past six years and the participation of the farmers in the training programmes was evaluated in the study. Trainings given in the cereals was comparatively higher than other trainings. Paddy and vegetable crops were pre-dominantly cultivated in Madurai followed by pulses, millets, vegetable crops and jasmine etc. More trainings should be conducted in Millets cultivation and value addition. Entrepreneurship training since both are more remunerative trainings which helps to develop their livelihoods and standard of living by additional income. Lesser number of trainings were conducted in pulses and millets. Popularizing the new pulses & millets varieties will help them to produce high yield than conventional varieties. Location specific technologies and machinery-based trainings will help the farmer to adopt it in their field and it resolve the problem more dependence on labor force. So, these areas should be addressed in the forthcoming training programmes.

REFERENCES

Selvi, P. T., & Balasubramaniam, D. Developing Training Index and Preference Of training Methods For KVK Training Programmes in Tamil nadu. International Jornal of Agricultutral Science and Research (IJASR), 9(4),149-156.
Jaiswal, M., Singh, A., Singh, K., & Singh, B. (2019). Training: An Effective Tool for Transfer of Agricultural Technologies. Indian Journal of Extension Education, 55(2), 1-5.
KVKs impact on dissemination of improved practices and technologies (2015). National Institute of Labour Economics Research and Development.
Singh, K., Peshin, R., & Saini, S. K. (2010). Evaluation of the agricultural vocational training programmes conducted by the Krishi Vigyan  Kendras (Farm Science Centres) in Indian Punjab. Journal of Agriculture and Rural Development in the Tropics and Subtropics (JARTS), 111(2), 65-77.
Sridhar, G., Rao, B. S., Patil, D., & Rao, S. M. Impact of Women empowerment through Drudgery Reduction in Agricultural Operation Trainings During 12 th Five Year Plan Period in BCT-Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Visakhapatnam District. International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology.