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Type : Other Article

Farmers Training Effectiveness and Implications for Scaling-up : The Case of Adarsha Rythus in Andhra Pradesh,

P. Bala Hussain Reddy, P.V.K. Sasidhar and P.V. Satya Gopal

Abstract

The Adarsha Rythus are trained as nodal functionaries between the farmers and the extension staff at village level on advanced crop planning, production, horticultural crops, micro irrigation practices, marketing issues, post harvest technology, credit related issues, irrigation and other allied agricultural activities. This paper presents the evaluation findings on effectiveness of residential training programmes organized for 260 Adarsha Rythus in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh. The key evaluation questions were on relevance of course contents, knowledge gain, skill improvement, utility of the topics and overall effectiveness of the programme. The evaluation findings indicated a high relevance of most of the contents, substantial knowledge gain and low skill improvement by the participants with overall effectiveness index of 69.38 per cent. It is recommended to: (a) select location specific and need based topics for improving the quality of the training programmes (b) give special emphasis on identifying skill based technologies and adopt appropriate adult learning training methodologies (c) extend training duration from 5 days to 7 – 10 days to enable intensive up-gradation of knowledge and skills (d) standardize the training curriculum and scale-up training programmes as open education resources all over the state to update Adarsha Rythus’ competencies and serve as an efficient extension facilitator at village level

Keyword: Farmers training; Effecti

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