A CRITICAL STUDY ON FARM LEADERS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THEIR CHARACTERISTICS AND ROLES FOR AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
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Date
1999-04-15
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UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES GKVK BANGALORE
Abstract
The technological development in the farm front has broadened the
information need of Indian farmers. Effective communication of new technologies to
millions of farmers in rural areas is essential for accelerated agricultural
development.
Opinion leaders in villages influence the decision making behaviour of their
fellow farmers in respect of agricultural technologies. Since they act as catalysts of
change there is a need to identify and use local opinion leaders in the transfer of
technology progrmmes. Hence, the present investigation was planned to study the
essential characteristics of these leaders and also their followers, the communication
behaviour of leaders, the role expectation and role performance of farm leaders as
perceived by leaders themselves and their followers, and finally, the relationship
between the characteristics of leaders and their role performance for agricultural
development.Ex-post-facto research design was followed. The study was conducted in
twelve agriculturally progressive villages of Mandya district of Karnataka State.
Sixty farm leaders identified through the key informant method and one hundred and
eighty follower farmers selected randomly from these twelve villages, formed the
respondents for the study. The characteristics of farm leaders were treated as
independent variables, while role performance and communication behaviour of farm
leaders formed the dependent variables. All the respondents were personally
interviewed using the pre-tested interview schedule and data were collected.
Appropriate statistical tests were used to analyse the data and interpret the results.
The salient findings of the study are as under:
The profile analysis of the respondents indicated that farm leaders were better
educated, more innovative, more self reliant, and possessed higher socio-economic
status, greater social participation, higher management orientation, greater empathy,
higher value orientation, more knowledge about agricultural development
programmes, higher contact with extension agency and greater mass media exposure
than their followers.
The findings on communication behaviour indicated that majority of farm
leaders consulted Agricultural Assistant of the Department of Agriculture for their
technical needs. Majority of them possessed medium level of overall knowledge and
medium overall interpretation behaviour on recommended production technologies of
rice, sugarcane and dairy enterprises. They possessed a favourable attitude towards
agricultural development programmes and evaluated the new agricultural information
either 'through discussion with specialists' or 'through discussion with progressive
farmers'. All leaders preserved the new information by memory. Majority of them
disseminated the new information to their fellow farmers either 'through
interpersonal oral communication' or 'through group discussion'. Majority of them
possessed medium overall communication behaviour.
The results on role expectation and role performance revealed that both farm
leaders and their followers perceived all the twentysix roles as important and there
was no significant difference in expectation between farm'leaders and their followers
regarding the roles to be performed by farm leaders.
Both farm leaders and their followers had similar perception on the role
performance of farm leaders in respect of certain roles as stated below.
Majority of leaders and their followers perceived that the performance of farm
leaders was 'regular' in roles namely; promotes group or community action in the
village', 'acts as a quick conveyer of severe problems of farmers to government ormass media' and 'considers the past experiences and future potentialities in accepting
or recommending new technologies'. Similarly, majority of them perceived that farm
leaders 'occasionally' performed the roles namely, 'focusses general and specific
problems of farmers in appropriate fora' and 'represents and speaks for the whole
village in official circle about agricultural enterprises'. A considerable number of
them perceived that farm leaders 'never' performed the roles namely, 'acts as a
teacher to train other farmers in learning new skills' and 'participates in farmers'
training programmes'.
Majority of leaders also rated their performance as 'regular' in respect of
eleven more roles.
A considerable number of followers perceived that farm leaders 'never'
performed the roles namely, 'always keeps group interest above self advantage', 'acts
as a front line demonstrator' and 'collects latest information from different sources
about agricultural enterprises'.
There was a significant difference in perception between farm leaders and their
followers regarding the role performance of farm leaders.
The characteristics namely, education, socio-economic status, achievement
motivation, self reliance and mass media exposure of farm leaders were positively
and significantly associated with their role performance.
The combined contribution of all the seventeen characteristics of farm leaders
was significant in predicting the role performance of farm leaders. All these variables
together were able to explain about 53.2 per cent of variation in the role performance
of farm leaders. However, the characteristic 'achievement motivation' was found to
be the crucial one.
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