International Journal of Agriculture Extension and Social Development

author(s)
Dr. Ranjan Jyoti Bezbaruah

abstract
The present study focuses on investigating the development of agriculture in the state of Assam through the prevailing methods of agricultural extension service. Due to the increasing demand for food grains and increasing population and also to raise farm income, both production and productivity aspects in agriculture occupy a significant importance. In that backdrop, the use of fertilizers play a crucial role in enhancing agricultural production and productivity by providing essential nutrients to the soil and thereby improving plant growth, crop yield, and overall soil health. Agricultural extension services provide information, knowledge, technical expertise regarding fertilizer application, crop based know-how etc. to the farmers. A field study was carried out in the Kamrup district of Assam to investigate the impact of extension service on fertilizer application and related aspects. A regression analysis was carried out to disentangle the effect of extension service on fertilizer application along with other control variables like farm size, irrigation, education etc. It is found that private extension service is the dominant source among the majority of farm households and private extension service has significant positive impact on the prime variable, i.e., fertilizer application. One worrying finding is that public source of extension service has very low penetration among farm households and has no significant impact as found in the study. Since most of the farm households are small and marginal farmers, public extension service should be revamped so that it reaches the resource poor farmers. The need of the hour is to cater the needs of those marginal and small size classes of the farm households through the public extension machinery.