Perceived effectiveness of public sector extension under decentralized agricultural extension system in the Punjab, Pakistan

Agricultural extension is a non-formal type of education that provides advisory services by the use of educational approach in acquiring knowledge and skills to deal with the growing needs of global world. In Pakistan agricultural extension services are being provided by the Extension Field Staff (EFS) of Agriculture department. To up-lift the living standard of rural people, who are nearly about 67% of the whole population, Government has tested so many extension systems but un-fortunately all of them were abolished and terminated one after the other due to multidimensional problems including use of top down approach and ineffective technology transfer mechanism between the researcher, farmer and extension worker. Recently in 2001 Government introduced institutional reforms of Agricultural Extension with the name `Devolution of Power Plan', which is the more advanced form of Decentralization. The decentralization of agricultural extension ref orms is being implemented in many developing countries in Asia. To determine the perceived effectiveness of the new system the present research study was designed and conducted in Punjab Province, which is the main agricultural producer in the country. Simple Random Sampling was used for the selection of study respondents. All the EFS working in the district Muzaffargarh of Punjab Province were selected as the respondents of the study. The instrument for the collection of data was a well-designed interview schedule, which was prepared after extensive literature review. The data, thus collected were analyzed with the help of SPSS by using descriptive statistics. The results of present study depicts that among agricultural extension activities undertaken by EFS under decentralized extension system crop production activities were disseminated in very good and ranked as `1'. Somewhat different trend was found in crop protection activities as they were disseminated in very good m a nner having rank order `2'. Whereas the post-harvest techniques also fell in good category. However, the information about marketing were good and average as reported by 28.0% of the respondents for each case, respectively. Activities related to post harvest techniques and marketing were ranked as `3' and `4', respectively. It was concluded that among individual contact methods farm and home visit was perceived as very good having rank `1'. Similarly In case of group contact method more than half of the respondents reported that farmer training meetings were used as very good with rank order `1'. In mass contact methods only print media fell in the category of `good' having rank order `1' on the basis of their weighted score.