12 pages, Mobile phones are almost universally available, and the costs of information transmission are low. They are used by smallholder farmers in low-income countries, largely successfully, to optimize markets for their produce. Fabregas et al. review the potential for boosting mobile phone use with smartphones to deliver not only market information but also more sophisticated agricultural extension advice. GPS-linked smartphones could provide locally relevant weather and pest information and video-based farming advice. But how to support the financial requirements of such extension services is less obvious, given the unwieldiness of government agencies and the vested interests of commercial suppliers.
Extension and Advisory Services (EAS) are delivered by millions of extension professionals representing the public, private and civil society located across the globe and have been helping in addressing farmers’ needs over the years, including during COVID-19 pandemic situation. However, public sector has been a major agency dealing with EAS in India and is facing several challenges and constraints to fulfil the demands of farmers on
timely basis. The challenge today is to change the organizational culture to incorporate innovation as a core value and to institutionalize the emerging paradigms. Further, different strategies and measures need to be taken to ensure timely and quality EAS by reorienting extension priorities in such emergency situations and later too. In this context, an effort to review the extension mechanism across India and also has focused on reorienting extension priorities post COVID-19 scenario. The study has highlighted on strengthening extension and feedback mechanism, improving research-extension linkages, capacity building, public-private partnership
(PPP), developing infrastructure, mass media support and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) etc. to improve the efficiency as the time demands. The paper concludes that reorienting extension
priorities is very essential with a vast network of various stakeholders by adapting effective approaches like utilization of social media, human resource development, PPP, farmer groups etc. during and post pandemic
scenario. Further, empirical efforts are also needed to develop reliable, location-specific, participatory, gender-sensitive and inexpensive extension methodologies and materials to meet the demands during such crisis.
Further, developing countries like India have to invest in terms of various resources like financial, human resource etc. for promoting higher productivity and sustainability through EAS.
