Communicating to Accelerate Adoption of Rape Seed in Ghazipur District of U.P.

This investigation is an attempt to study the adoption level and constraints in rapeseed production technology by the farmers. The study revealed that majority of the respondents (49.17 per cent) belonged to medium adoption level of production technologies followed by low (35.83 per cent) and high level (15.00 per cent). Out of eleven recommended production technologies, the majority of the respondents in spite of high adoption of most of recommended practices were not adopting the recommended weed, insect pest and disease management, line sowing and recommended doses of manures and fertilizers as well as unable to provide as required water management. The reason may the lack of knowledge, unavailability of HYV seeds in time, timely unavailability of fertilizers in the market or high cost of fertilizers, high cost of inputs, unskilled labour, high wages, week extension support at village level, lack of subsidy and support price were a considerable constraints in adoption as recorded by the respondents. The majority of respondents interacted with their fellow farmers as their personal localite communication sources for seeking information related to adoption of production technology followed by neighbours/friends, shop keepers, family members, relatives and gram pradhan, while for majority of Government representative i.e. village development officer were their personal cosmopolite source followed by agriculture extension officers, KVK staff and representative of private company under mass communication sources and majority of the respondents interacted with radio and television media respectively followed by newspapers and telephone/mobile. The majority of respondents had high level of knowledge gain through the combination of training + literature + demonstration followed by training + demonstration, demonstration and training alone. However, the knowledge gain through literature was found unsatisfactory results in the study.