Vol. 9, Special Issue 4 (2020)

Author(s):
Ishrat F Bhat, Nasir Husain, SH Baba and Masroor Majeed

Abstract:
Tribal people are most vulnerable sections of the society and they rely on subsistence agricultural practices for their living. The agricultural practices are practiced under rain-fed conditions over terraces drawn out on undulated topography. This background motivated us to analyze the maize cultivation in relationship with technological gaps so as to arrive at the extension gaps and policies to bridge them. This study mainly perused the primary data obtained from sample respondents selected in tribal area of Kashmir Valley. The results revealed that tribal people were allocating major proportion of their cropped area for maize cultivation followed by cherry and legumes. It was observed that there were huge technological gaps in the use of input technologies. Moreover their intercultural operations were far from the scientific recommendations which led to lower returns and uneconomical farming practices. Further lower productivity and fairly low quality of the produce resulted in lower returns to their little surpluses. Study revealed poor role of extension agencies in these area which could be the major cause of their unscientific maize cultivation. Only few respondents were found to have seen any extension personnel around their farms and major of them even did not know about such agencies. A significant difference was observed in yield levels of respondents having received information from friends or extension worker and those having no information. The study also examined the various dimension of their contacts and information sources and could ascertain an important role of extension agencies if their farming has to be made remunerative. Based upon findings, this study emphasized upon strengthening/streamlining extension system in these areas among other policy options.