MSc

Village stay module, as part of the Rural Agricultural Work Experience Programme (RAWEP) is being implemented by College of Agriculture, Vellayani since the year 1995.The study titled ‘Evaluation of Village stay module of Rural Agricultural Work Experience Programme (RAWEP): The case of College of Agriculture, Vellayani’ was conducted during the time period 2017 to 2019 among the farmers, students and people’s representatives who had participated in the village stay programme conducted by College of Agriculture, Vellayani at five different gramapanchayaths namely Kadakkarappally(Alappuzha), Sulthan bathery (Wayanad), Konnathady (Idukki), Elanthoor (Pathanamthitta) and Upputhara (Idukki) in the years 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 respectively. The main objective of the study was to evaluate the outcome of village stay module of RAWEP in terms of perception of farmers and students towards its content and conduct. The main items of observations to be made were, to study the extent of utility of development plan submitted to respective panchayaths as perceived by the peoples’ representatives, to study the profile characteristics of farmers and to identify the constraints faced by the students while implementing the village stay programme. The suggestions from farmers, students and people’s representatives were also taken into account for the betterment of the village stay programme in future.

The respondents of the study comprised of 75 farmers, 50 students and 30 people’s representatives i.e., 15 farmers who had participated in each of the village stay programme, ten students from five different batches of College of Agriculture, Vellayani who had conducted village stay programme and six people’s representatives from each panchayath who were involved in the conduct of the village stay programme.

Perception of farmers towards the content and conduct of village stay programme was measured using perception index developed by Kotte (2014). Based on the analysis, it was found that 58.66 percent of the farmers had high perception towards village stay programme followed by 36.00 percent and 5.33 percent of the respondents with medium and low perception respectively. Among the five components of village stay module, exhibition had the highest effect on the perception of farmers towards village stay programme with a communality of 67.6 percent followed by agriclinics with a communality of 51.3 percent. Method demonstration and PRA were ranked third and fourth with communalities of 26.6 percent and 11.4 percent respectively. Training, with a communality of 1.2 percent was ranked last as having the least effect on the perception of farmers towards village stay programme.
Assessment of the perception of students on the attainment of the objectives, content and conduct of village stay programme revealed that 54.00 percent of the students had medium perception and 40.00 percent had high perception towards the programme. Only six percent of the students were having low perception towards the programme.

The study revealed that most of the respondent farmers belonged to the category of more than 35 years of age and had high school or above educational qualification. Moreover, 40.00 percent of the respondents were having a total land holding of 0.51 – 1 acre and 50.66 percent of the farmers were having a farming experience of more than 25 years. More than fifty percent (54.66 %) of the farmers had medium innovativeness and 69.33 percent had medium entrepreneurial behaviour. More than two third (70.66 %) of the respondents were having medium mass media contact and 73.33 percent had medium extension agency contact. Nearly fifty one percent (50.66) of the farmers had attended one to three trainings during the last one year and only eight percent reported that they had never attended any training during the prescribed time period. Regarding economic motivation and progressiveness, it was found that 58.66 percent and 53.33 percent of the respondents belonged to high and medium economic motivation and progressiveness respectively. Moreover, 56.00 percent of the farmers had medium social participation followed by 37.33 per cent with high social participation.

Result of the correlation analysis revealed that age and extension agency contact were positively and significantly correlated with perception of farmers towards the content and conduct of village stay programme at 5% level of significance while experience in farming, mass media contact and economic motivation were positively and significantly correlated with perception of farmers at 1% level of significance. Utility of development plan submitted to the respective panchayaths was measured by using Rank based quotient method by Sabarathnam (1988) which revealed that development plan was successful in projecting the entrepreneurial scope of crops/commodities unique to the particular village and was useful in popularising the new crop production and value addition technologies developed by Kerala Agricultural University.

Poor basic facilities, tight schedule of work due to insufficient number of days and insufficient number of experts for the conduct of village stay programme were the major constraints revealed by the students. Integrating different modules like entrepreneurship development programme and project management, self-help group training and attachment to progressive farmers with the village stay programme, introducing green protocol and incorporating strategies to overcome current threats like water scarcity and climate change were the major suggestions given by students to improve the programme while providing proper follow-up, introduction of innovative technologies to the farmers and widening the publicity of the programme to district level were the suggestions given by farmers and people’s representatives. Hence, it could be concluded that majority of the farmers and students had medium to high perception towards village stay programme and the results of the study would be helpful for further necessary modifications of the village stay programmes of Collage of Agriculture, Vellayani.