A study on talks broadcasted in farm radio programme krishi samriddhi and its effectiveness as perceived by listener farmers

Radio is one of the most powerful mass media for the dissemination of agricultural information and its effectiveness has been well established by many researchers. Krishi Samriddhi radio programme is a farm radio programme which is being sponsored by ICAR-Vivekananda Parvatiya Krishi Anusandhan Sansthan, Almora and broadcasted through All India Radio, Akashvani, Almora since July 2009 with the prime objective to disseminate modern agricultural information amongst the local hill farmers as per their need. The present study was conducted to analyze the talks broadcasted in Krishi Samriddhi farm radio programme in a year and its effectiveness as perceived by the farmer listeners. The analysis showed that a total of 53 radio talks were broadcasted during this period mostly on the topics related to crop production (30.19%) followed by crop improvement (24.53%), social science (20.75%), crop protection (15.09%), animal husbandry (7.55%) and horticulture (1.89%). Majority of the farmer listeners perceived that presentation of the radio talks is appealing (96.67%), credible information is shared through this program (96.67%), duration of the programme is sufficient (95%), broadcast timing of the topics is as per with local agricultural practices (95%), time of broadcasting of the programme is very conducive for farmers to listen regularly (93.33%), program is increasing the knowledge of farmers regarding improved farm practices (93.33%), language used in the talks is easily understandable (91.67%), topics are of diverse nature and cover every sphere of agriculture (91.67%), broadcasted topics are very much relevant (90%) and frequency of broadcasting of the programme is adequate (90%). Findings of this study suggest that radio should be utilized with all its possible applications to communicate agricultural information in local dialect in rural areas.