GENDER BASED INVOLVEMENT OF AGRO-INPUT DEALERS IN EXTENSION ACTIVITIES IN MAHARASHTRA STATE, INDIA

S. ARGADE¹*, A. SARKAR², S. MISHRA^3
1ICAR- Central Institute for Women in Agriculture, Bhubaneswar - 751 003, Odisha, India.
²ICAR- Central Institute for Women in Agriculture, Bhubaneswar - 751 003, Odisha, India.
³ICAR- Central Institute for Women in Agriculture, Bhubaneswar - 751 003, Odisha, India.
* Corresponding Author : argadeshivaji@yahoo.com

Received : 07-05-2015     Accepted : 12-06-2015     Published : 02-07-2015
Volume : 7     Issue : 3       Pages : 470 - 473
Int J Agr Sci 7.3 (2015):470-473

Keywords : Agro-input dealer, Extension activity, Gender, Involvement
Academic Editor : Anoop M., Ponnusamy K., Singh Anshuman
Conflict of Interest : None declared

The heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides by the farmers is becoming threat to sustain environmental security. One side, timely availability of critical farm inputs helps to increase farm productivity and another side, their optimum use helps to maintain environmental and economic balance. Hence, agro-input dealers can play major role in ensuring farmer’s access to agricultural inputs and environmental security because they serve as the closest body to the farmers. The full participation of agro-input dealers is required to meet the challenges faced by extension system in India which can be achieved when they are perceived as subject of development especially women agro-input dealers. Towards this end, the small scale study was conducted in Pune district of Maharashtra with a random sample of 30 agro-input dealers (15 women and 15 men) to determine the extent of involvement of agro-input dealers in extension activities. Data were collected through well-structured interview schedule and analyzed by using descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression. It was observed that majority (53.34%) of the men agro-input dealers were less involved in the extension activities whereas the majority (66.67%) of the women agro-input dealers were moderately involved in extension activities. The maximum likelihood estimates indicates that gender, computer literacy and target farmer of agro-input dealers were found to be significant at 5% level of significance with their extent of involvement in extension activities.