Why India Must Rethink Agricultural Education, Research and Extension

By Dr. Abdul Kareem Kolathayi

Retired Professor of Agricultural Extension and Associate Director, Kerala Agricultural University

Chairman, Karshaka Vidyapeedam

Seventy-five years after Independence, Indian agriculture stands transformed by forces unimaginable when our educational and research institutions were conceived. Farmers today operate in an environment shaped by climate uncertainty, labour scarcity, volatile markets, changing dietary patterns, digital technologies, and rising costs of cultivation. Yet the three pillars meant to support them — agricultural education, research, and extension — continue to function with assumptions, structures, and methodologies shaped in a very different era.

This growing disconnect has become a structural constraint on agricultural progress. What is needed now is a candid national reflection on whether our agricultural knowledge systems are evolving at a pace commensurate with the realities faced by farmers on the ground.

An educational architecture misaligned with contemporary agriculture

Agricultural universities continue to produce graduates with sound technical foundations, yet many are inadequately prepared for the multidimensional complexity of present-day agriculture. A significant proportion of graduates pursue careers in banking, agribusiness, management institutions, or sectors unrelated to farming. Such diversification is neither undesirable nor avoidable in a modern economy. The deeper concern lies elsewhere.

Agricultural education in India is sustained by substantial public investment, including contributions from farmers themselves through taxation. This confers a public-purpose mandate on agricultural institutions. Every graduate, irrespective of the career path chosen, carries a continuing responsibility to contribute knowledge, perspective, or support to the farming community. This foundational ethic, however, is seldom articulated clearly or embedded meaningfully within academic culture.

Curricula across disciplines remain heavily dependent on content and perspectives developed decades ago, insufficiently revised in response to advances in digital technologies, climate science, value-chain development, behavioural research, and rural entrepreneurship. Pedagogical practices continue to rely largely on conventional classroom instruction, with limited emphasis on problem-based learning, design thinking, or farmer-led innovation.

Agricultural Extension, in particular, continues to be treated more as a service activity than as a science grounded in human behaviour, communication, and decision-making under uncertainty. Without a conscious reorientation of content, pedagogy, and professional ethos, agricultural education risks producing graduates equipped with tools increasingly misaligned with the demands of contemporary farming systems.

Research priorities beyond institutional comfort zones

India’s agricultural research system has played a historic role in achieving food security and improving productivity. Yet research agendas remain disproportionately focused on varietal development and incremental advances within established disciplinary boundaries. While such work remains important, farmers today require a much broader spectrum of solutions.

These include technologies that reduce labour drudgery, facilitate value addition at farm and community levels, enhance climate resilience, and strengthen farmers’ position within markets. Grassroots innovations — such as farmer-developed crop varieties, locally adapted tools, and women-friendly equipment — often emerge faster from field realities than from formal research pipelines. This raises an uncomfortable but necessary question: are research priorities shaped primarily by farmers’ needs or by institutional convenience and existing incentive structures?

A rebalanced research agenda must consciously invest in areas such as micro- and macro-mechanisation, low-cost value-addition technologies, soil-less and protected cultivation systems, and digital and AI-enabled decision-support tools. These domains hold significant transformative potential but remain underrepresented in mainstream research planning.

Repositioning extension as a science of engagement

Among the three pillars, agricultural extension has undergone the least transformation. Much of extension practice continues to rest on outdated assumptions that portray farmers as passive recipients of externally generated technologies. In reality, farmers make complex decisions informed by risk, experience, local knowledge, and economic constraints.

Modern extension must therefore integrate behavioural science, communication theory, participatory research methods, and context-specific evidence. Farmer-to-farmer learning systems, collaborative experimentation, and what may be described as “reverse extension” — where farmers present innovations and experiential feedback to scientists — deserve systematic institutional recognition rather than sporadic appreciation.

An extension system that fails to acknowledge farmers as co-creators of knowledge risks losing both relevance and credibility.a

Towards a national renewal mission

Reimagining India’s agricultural knowledge system requires a coordinated approach grounded in a few core principles: curriculum redesign aligned with scientific, technological, and socio-economic change; research agendas driven by field-level challenges rather than disciplinary inertia; extension systems rooted in behavioural science and genuine co-creation; and institutional mechanisms to recognise, validate, and integrate farmer innovation.

Equally important is the need to reaffirm a social compact that recognises agricultural professionals — across disciplines and career trajectories — as accountable to the farming community whose resources sustain these institutions.

The larger moral question

Agricultural education, research, and extension exist because of farmers. They are financed through public resources. Their legitimacy rests on public service. When curricula lag behind societal and technological change, when research priorities remain insulated from field realities, and when institutions innovate more slowly than farmers themselves, renewal becomes not a matter of choice but of responsibility.

Rebuilding India’s agricultural knowledge system is central to the resilience of its farming community and the wellbeing of the nation. Incremental adjustments are no longer adequate. What is required is the collective will to rethink and realign the institutions that constitute one of the most critical knowledge systems of our republic.

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