Impact of Kissan Kerala on Information Empowerment of Farmers of Kerala

Information is the data that have been processed into a form that is meaningful to the recipient and is of real or perceived value in current or prospective decisions (Davis, 1974). Empowerment is the bottom up process of generating and building capacities to exercise control over one's life. Agricultural Information Empowerment is conceptualized as the process of seeking, processing and evaluating information on agricultural technologies thereby manipulating and reinventing agricultural practices by various users at a time they can most efficiently utilize it. Albeit agriculture contributes to 13.9% of India's GDP (2013) National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO, 2011–2012) has recently brought out a dismal picture that in India 50% of farm households are in debt. Information empowerment of the farming community can be ensured by strengthening four dimensions like information seeking, information storage, information evaluation and information utilization. The study has been conducted during the year 2014–2015 in Allapuzha and Thrissur districts of Kerala. From the project area, 240 user-farmers of and 40 non-user farmers were selected from eight villages. The findings of the study revealed that in case of user-farmers four dimensions of Information Empowerment such as Information Seeking (62.08%), Information Storage (52.08%), Information Evaluation (51.67%) and Information Utilization (57.08%) have contributed medium level while in case of nonuser farmers the dimensions have recorded low level: Information Seeking (47.5%), Information Storage (82.5%), Information Evaluation (72.5%) and Information Utilization (42.5%). 50% of the user-farmers had high level of Information Empowerment, 45% had medium level and 5% had low level. In case of non-user farmers 37% had low level, 33% had medium level and 30% had high level of Information Empowerment. Agricultural extension system should focus on these four domains to fill the information gap. Thus KISSAN KERALA successfully completing one decade should scale up its technology.