A study on media preferences of tribal farmers in the hilly district of Reasi, Jammu and Kashmir, India

Timely information has great significance in the agricultural development. Information dissemination through highly preferred communication media constitutes one of the most striking developments of present era. It is fact that the Indian extension system is under lot of pressures where the extension workers have to cater the cervices of not only vast population but also to perform administrative, elections, input supply and numerous other assignments. Practically, it is not feasible to serve all the farmers, all the time for all the problems when ratio of extension worker and farmer is more than 1:1000.Thus, the potential of mass media can be exploited to serve the rural population of tribal farmers in the different areas. In order to increase the crop production in the tribal farmers fields in hilly areas, it is necessary that they should adopt the modern farming techniques.Hilly terrains was the major challenge faced during the study. In order to know the media preferences of tribal farmers residing in hilly areas, the present study was conducted in hilly district Reasi of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir which was selected purposively. A sample of 120 tribal farmers was selected randomly. A list of different sources of information was prepared and respondents were asked to indicate their preferences on a three point scale. It was found that Extension Personnel of KVK, Extension Personnel of Agri.Deptt. and progressive tribal farmers were highly preferred by the respondents.