Information Needs of Farmers of Palamau Division of Jharkhand in Context of IT-Mediated Agricultural Extension

Information Technology has opened a new vista in transfer of technology. There are two broad areas of Information Technology viz. connectivity and content. For content development, information needs of the farmers require to be identified with active participation of the farmers. The present study deals with the identification of information needs of the farmers of Palamau division of Jharkhand. Scientists of BAU and ICAR, Officials of the Department of Agriculture, Government of Jharkhand, Officials of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Hyderabad and representatives of Alternative for India Development (AID) along with farmers of the locality identified the information needs of the farmers pertaining to agriculture so that content to be created could be relevant. The members could identify 24, 16, 18 and 19 items for agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry and natural resource management. Pest and disease management in agriculture and horticulture, feed management in animal husbandry and water harvesting under natural resource management ranked highest amongst identified information needs.