Joint Director (Extension) Indian Agriculture Research Institute, New Delhi, Baldeo Singh delivering the keynote address at the national seminar on 'Appropriate Extension Strategies for Management of Rural Resources' organised at the University of Agricultural Sciences here on Tuesday stressed that agriculture in India had become more challenging, competitive, demand-driven, knowledge-based and market-oriented.

Though there has been progress in the research and extension, the poverty, credit indebtedness, family division, problem of availability of quality inputs and a high cost of production were still the serious issues affecting farmer's profits, Baldeo Singh added. He said a critical appraisal and redressal of these issues was essential to bring smiles back onto the farmer's face.

Singh pointed out that technologies must be both affordable and geared to the needs of the poor and undernourished.

"The extension system has to be more responsive and aggressive in its approach and strategy, not only to accelerate the transfer process of sustainable agriculture, but also to take care of gender needs, develop local capacity for rural resource management and provide knowledge support to pre and post-harvest practices, value-addition, marketing and entrepreneurship development. The systematic appraisal of agro-ecological regions was necessary to plan an appropriate extension strategy management of rural resources," he asserted.

Inaugurating the meet leader of the Opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Council and former agriculture minister H K Patil urged the government of Indian to waive short-term and long term loans of farmers who have not been able to recover their investments due to various factors. He said the financial institutions should stop recovery of loans from the farmers who have suffered loss and provide them an opportunity to pay it back in easy installments.

He wanted the loan amount to be deducted from the proceeds of the sales of the crop. Admitting that the marketing system was not scientific in India, Patil demanded that it be made scientific and necessary infrastructure be provided. He opposed use of coercive methods for recovering loans from the farmers.

H K Patil who as the agriculture minister in the S M Krishna government had experimented cloud seeding to overcome the impact of drought in the state demanded that the Centre should formulate a weather modification policy and set up a national institute of weather modification.

He also urged the Centre to initiate a policy on issues to fix remunerative price before sowing/planting and to include marginal input cost, rental value of the land and risk cost as the components while computing the cost of production. Expressing his concern over water being wasted Patil stressed the need for shifting from flood irrigation to drip and sprinkler irrigation.

Vice Chancellor J H Kulkarni presided. Former vice chancellor J V Goud released the souvenir. Indian Society of Extension Education L V Hirevenkanagoudar welcomed.