Agriculture Extension

The ESEE is a biennial event that is organized in rotation by European countries for training and research in the purpose of communication for agricultural and rural extension. The first seminar was organized in Finland 40 years ago. This year, the 21st ESEE took place between September 2 to 6, 2013 in Antalya, Turkey.
As it known the story of ESEE starts in Helsinki. ESEEs have also a substantial history and tradition which began in Helsinki, Finland, in 1973.  The success of the first venture in 1973 led to a decision to meet again after two years in a different venue within Europe for broadly, the same purposes, and this practice has been continued.  In a way, the use of European experience and expertise in other parts of the world has become an associated issue with implications for the ESEEs.
The main purpose of this seminar traditionally is to share the ideas and practices of the participants on participatory approach to agricultural extension works. As usual this year, we will see and list to the best practice in extension between public and private extension services around the world starting from Europe. We have the possibilities to discuss and argue and to adopt them in other countries, and to meet good friends during years. During these passed years we are the Extension Educators, Scientists and have met all around. The issue, "train trainers to train" is the same but the world around has changed. As it known, we need food, and the farmers are still providing the material for safety foods as well as they are most responsible of security of food. We, the extension educators are finding the innovations for new and less time consuming and easier work for agriculture.
The seminar programme is added to the end of this book, as it can be seen during the seminar has implemented plenary and working group session, and parallel sessions, are part of brain storming and help all participants, to share their knowledge and experiences on extension and relevant subjects, and to organize technical and cultural tour activities.
We hope that the proceedings book will be very good reference for all participants and others who are involved in rural extension and education and 21st ESEE has been fruitful for each participant.
I would like to express our special thanks to the founders of ESEE initiative as Dr. Harri Westermarck, Dr. Maurice Rolls, Dr. Anne Van den Ban, Dr. Niels Röling, Dr. Volker Hoffmann and European and all other colleagues of who contributed to the profession and Seminar’s organizers.
Finally, my thanks go to members of the scientific and organizing committees, moderation and distinguished participants for valuable collaboration and contributions.
Sincerely yours,

Orhan Özçatalbaş, PhD.
President of 21th ESEE

Akdeniz University Faculty of Agriculture
Dept.of Agricultural Economics
Extension Science
07058 Antalya/Turkiye

Dates are major horticultural crop in Middle East region. It is the major fruit crop of arid deserts, in tropical and subtropical areas of the world including Gulf Cooperation Council of Northern Africa and Southern Asia. In Pakistan date palm are grown in four provinces. The area under cultivation of date palm is 98.7 thousand hectares with total production 735 thousand tons. The date palm of Sindh is mainly concentrated in district Khairpur and it is the biodiversity centre for the date palm having more than 300 varieties, which is also major date producing district of Pakistan. The Agriculture Extension Services play an important role in agriculture development by improving agricultural practices and adopting new production technologies in farming.
The data used in this study was collected directly from date palm growers in district Khairpur using specially designed questionnaire. Data were collected through field survey in date palm growing area. The 60 growers in the study area were selected for this purpose. The Field survey was conducted regarding use of various inputs in date palm orchards, planting method of newly planted offshoots, irrigation, pollination, cultural practices, protection from pests & pathogens etc. The aim of present study was to conduct survey and to improve agricultural practices in date palm orchards & to disseminate information for production technologies to date palm growers.
It was concluded from the survey that awareness level of the respondents varied too much for different aspects of crop and orchard management. In general not very large percentage of growers was aware of latest developments in the field.
The study therefore recommends agricultural extension programs to date palm growers, stakeholders, researchers and Government. The data were analyzed using the statistical software SPSS. A secondary data source was also used to draw out results and suggestions.

The present study was undertaken to analyze the nutritional composition of celery and mint to be used for beverages preparation, using a variety of fruit bases like orange, gooseberry and cherry tomatoes and also to chemically determine the nutritional constituents of the prepared beverages. Celery juice/pulp and mint was incorporated into three beverages using orange, gooseberry and cherry tomato in three different drinks along with Stevia as the natural and zero calorie sweeteners, using the standard ingredients and methods of preparation. The four treatments were T The beverages prepared were organoleptically evaluated for color, consistency, taste & flavor and overall acceptability using a 9 point Hedonic Scale. The cherry tomato based celery beverage with mint was best among all the three. The nutritional compositions of beverages were chemically analyzed. The total carbohydrate content ranged from 2.28gm to 33.5gm/100ml, the carotene content ranged from 9µg-486.32µg, the highest being in the cherry tomato based drink. The iron content was between 1.2mg and 2.66mg/100ml, the vitamin-C was between 22.8mg and 600mg/100ml, the highest being in the gooseberry based juice. The calcium content ranged from 5mg-56.56mg/100ml. It was concluded from the study that the beverages formulated using celery; mint and Stevia at different levels of incorporation were at par with conventional beverages while improving the vitamin-C, carotene, iron and calcium content in addition to the fact that celery and mint has several other therapeutic benefits.

The mobile revolution transformed the ways we socialize and conduct business.  Today, mobile technology is an essential element of every aspect of digital success.  More people are accessing the Internet through mobile devices than through wired connections.  Mobile device users are always connected, actively leveraging information, knowledge and social activities.  The rapid growth of mobile usage in the world created many opportunities that leverage the ubiquity of mobile networks.  Clearly mobile revolution will continue, and organizations not only create mobile strategy, they devote more resources to deliver innovative mobile services and next must-have applications (apps) for the agricultural sector.  There are many design challenges and considerations in developing mobile apps that can be widely accepted by users in agricultural communities.  This paper discusses mobile apps in the agricultural domain, considerations and challenges for successful mobile app development and focuses on a cross-platform mobile development approach adopted by University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).  This cross-platform framework is an intuitive approach to developing apps quickly, easily and cost effectively.  A mobile portal and sample mobile apps developed at UF/IFAS are presented.  Effective and quality mobile app deployment in agriculture needs a clear mobile strategy, creative ideas and collective efforts from developers, domain experts and organizations.

The objective of this research was to ascertain the communal farmers' perceptions and experiences regarding the current communal market system. The study was carried out in the area of Mhondoro-Mubaira, situated in Mashonaland West province of Zimbabwe. The population samples for the study comprised of communal farmers (N=150) and extension officers (N=25. According to the study, private buyers are the most preferred buyers for all the produce, for field, garden crops and livestock. The reason for favorable rating of the private buyers is they offer competitive prices, they pay the farmers on delivery of produce and sometimes they cover transport costs. Even though the private buyers are the most preferred buyers, farmers still prefer selling produce between themselves and the open market because they have control of the prices especially for livestock. The Grain Marketing Board and the Cold Storage Commission, which are government run, are the least favorable markets for the farmers. This is because these institutions offer the lowest prices, they do not pay on delivery and offer any assistance to the farmers regarding transport/transport costs. The results show that the farmers are not satisfied with the of the current market system which they deem restrictive, minimally supported by the government, low participation by the private sector, and the current economic situation in Zimbabwe overburdens the situation. The government of Zimbabwe needs to create a conducive environment for private players to participate with government interferences through overburdening policies.

Water and Land Management Institutes across country had a very specific mandate to cater the needs of the specific target group like land and water managers, irrigation engineers, civil engineers, water management specialists, agriculture specialists, gender and social development experts, professionals, para – professionals, community leaders, water users and farmers. Over time the WALMIs in different states took larger responsibilities and widened their network, venturing in natural resources development and management, community based institution development and management, monitoring, evaluation, learning and documentation in the cross sectoral setting. The WALMI, Bhopal in its recent past have been at the fulcrum of the training and institution development in the state of Madhya Pradesh. WALMI, Bhopal being one of the key training institutions aspire to evolve a broad framework of quality management in the training and development, with the sole objective of setting benchmark standards for state level training institutions, it conducted a National Workshop at Bhopal. The present paper outlines the purpose, process and products that may suit the current and future requirements of the state level training institutions in the state and elsewhere. The workshop proceedings led to the internal churning and ignited the process of coining the benchmark standards for academic qualities, enabling infrastructures, standard operating processes to conduct and manage the trainings and forging the inter – institutional linkages in the current and future institutional eco – system. The paper also provides the opportunities for the readers and professionals interested in training and capacity building of the human resources at various levels to contribute and enrich the process of adopting and adapting to the new benchmarking system and benchmark standards. It provides an opportunity to provide the best practices evolved over time and mainstream the key learning by converting the best practices in to indicators. The paper also highlights the critical gaps and underlines the information requirement to satisfy the necessary and sufficient conditions for effective measurement and monitoring framework for quality management at such training institutions.

Agriculture in hill regions of Uttarakhand is mainly dependent on rain. The scattered and uneven land of hills hinders production of high yield. Various oilseed, cereals, pulses and vegetable crops were demonstrated at farmer's field along with their farmers' owned varieties and practices. All the recommended cultivation practices were performed to grow the crops. Front Line Demonstrations of improved technologies of major hill crops along with farmers' practice were conducted during 2011-12 to 2013-14 at farmer's field in hill region of Uttarakhand. The respondents were selected through purposive random selection method as the data was to be collected from the adopted farmers for the demonstrations. Results revealed that the high yielding varieties of oilseed, cereals, pulses and vegetable crops have given more production as well as more economic benefit than the local varieties over the years. To gain more yield and benefit from the farming in hills and to cope up with such extreme conditions scientific methods can be adopted in these conditions.

This study aimed at exploring the information deficiency among vegetables growers regarding production practices of vegetables. Total 208 vegetable growers, who were selected randomly participated in the study as respondents. The data were collected on structured questionnaire through face-to-face interview technique. The analysis of the data indicated that the farmers had diverse demographic conditions, but primarily with ordinary level of education (52.4% were illiterate), small land holdings and over reliance on farming sources to generate income (77.9%). Cultivation of vegetables was observed on small land holdings whereas 87% aimed at not only commercializing the produce abut also meet the domestic needs. In order to meet information needs, important for the vegetable’s cultivation, neighbour farmers were the most preferred information source (59.61%) while agriculture department (10.57%) and agriculture helpline (8.48%) were the least. Farmers had high level of information deficiency regarding Fertilizer application (x̅=4.38), Seed rate (x̅=4.25), Insect’s pests/diseases identification (4.01) and medium level deficiency regarding selection of Varieties (x̅=3.87), Insects pets management (x̅=3.53) and Harvesting (x̅=3.51). This is affirmed that farmers had information deficiency about the major aspects of the production and it could have impacted the production inversely. Farmers had more inclination towards traditional information sources and this could be the reason of information deficiency among farmers. This study urges more proactive role of agricultural extension department to mainstream the information delivery mechanism for the timely access and uniform delivery of required information among vegetable growers.

Isabgol is the main cash crop of the farmers in Jaisalmer district. The farmers having large land holding size and irrigation facility available by IGNP Cannel and Tube well. In the Rabi season most of farmers growing Isbgol as medicinal crops. Mustard as oil seed crops. Wheat as grain crops, Chickpea as pulse crop and Cumin as spices crop. Seed dropping is the serious problem in this area and soil productivity is very low. So many farmers adopted sifting farming for Isabgol cultivation. Irrigation generally mad by sprinkler. Above 1990 the most of farmer done the main entrepreneur of animal production. For transfer of new agricultural practices to the farmers, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Scientist playing major role and trained to farmers continuously. In this connection the present study was conducted in the Jaisalmer district to know training needs of farmers and different level of training needs between beneficiaries and non beneficiary respondents towards improved production practices of Isabgol. In the result of study show that "selection of seed and seed rate". "Irrigation management" and "Harvesting, storage and marketing" is the most needed by the overall categories of the farmers.