Farmers preference Regarding Various Extension Approaches Followed by Private Extension Service Providers: A Study in Tarai region of Uttarakhand

Private Extension Services Providers (PESPs) refers to those individuals/agencies who render services in the area of agriculture and allied aspects for which farmers are expected to pay a fee (or free) and it can be viewed as supplementary and/or complementary to public extension services. In other words, privatisation is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of business or services from the public sector (government) to the private sector. In a broader sense, privatisation refers to the process of gradual transfer of any government functions to the private sectors including governmental functions like revenue collection and law enforcement. The PESPs used various extension approaches for delivering services to the farming community. So, in order to study various extension approaches of PESPs the present study was taken in Udam Singh Nagar district of Uttarakhand state. A sample size of sixty respondents was selected based on simple random sampling technique. The respondents included client farmers of PESPs such as of Hariyali Kisan Bazaar, e-Choupal and Tata Kisan Sansar. Among various extension approaches followed, it was found that ‘Direct selling/purchasing’ and ‘Share cropping system’ were ‘most preferred’ and ‘least preferred’ extension approaches, respectively under private extension system. The rationale behind farmers for choosing various extension approaches was also taken. Thus it was found that ‘Direct selling/purchasing’ was the most preferred extension approach in private extension system because of the advantages the farmers had over other approaches.