Handbook of Agricultural Extension

Description

Agricultural extension is one of the important drivers of farmers’ development through conscious use of communication and dissemination of useful technologies.  Therefore, extension field staff working in the field are regarded as major driver of farmers’ growth. The role of extension field staff is inevitable, and they are the carrier of innovations from the research to the farmers. The dissemination of innovations is impossible without agricultural extension sector. That is why, Pakistan was graced with a unified department of agricultural extension in 1961 and since then extension sector id harnessing its best potential to contribute in farmers’ development and agricultural growth. To strengthen this system, on universities level agricultural extension is regarded as one of the major disciplines. This discipline enables students to understand the concept of agricultural extension and different communication skills to meet the needs of the farming communities. These needs are mostly met by an effective communication from the extension field staff.

Being the part of agricultural extension sector, it was observed that our students studying agricultural extension mostly lack in basic understanding of agricultural extension, have meager access to the objective material relating to agricultural extension and have no accessible guiding literature to formulate their research studies.

In order to facilitate students, this book entitled “A Handbook of Agricultural Extension” has been written in very simple and understanding form. The contents included in this book are much needed for the students. For instance, this book will enable students to be familiar with the concept and history of agricultural extension, history of agricultural extension programs in Pakistan, theories and models of agricultural extension, some tips for research and development and an access to Multiple Choice Questions for the preparation of different examination. In short, this book has multiple avenues to facilitate students. This book would be very helpful for the students and teachers to mainstream their understanding about the agricultural extension.

We would like to acknowledge those authors who work has been cited in this book. Of course, without which the book would have not been at this standard. We made our best efforts to make this book of worth but still the readers may find some shortcomings. There is always room for the improvement. The feedback from the readers is always welcome for the further improvement.