Changing scenario of extension sercives

Extension has been recently defined as ‘System that facilitates the access of farmers, their organizations and other market actors to knowledge, information and technologies ’. We can say that Extension is one of the few forums, which gives an opportunity to farmers and government or non-government staff to meet face to face to consider the decisions related to the development of farmer community. Effective extension services in India made the Green Revolution successful throughout the nation. With these effective extension services we got a significant achievement in food production on one hand, but on other hand we are still facing the problems of food and nutrition security, poverty alleviation and unsustainable livelihood. In present scenario, extension must be ready for shifting its target from investment in crops to the concerns of people. Now, complexity of rural development demands that farmers, input suppliers, local officials and other actors meet and negotiate to arrive at joint decisions for addressing complex problems of sustainable development of farmer community. This paper is an attempt to draw an attention to the new approaches of using extension to help the poor in a pluralistic institutional environment and making it more demand-driven.