This is Mahesh Chander again, answering the question: who should be the target for agricultural extension services in family farms? All members of the family farm need information and extension services. Some categories of members need more attention due to their crucial role in future agriculture. Youth apart from farm women, is one such category which should be the target for extension services. Adult vs Youth: When India became independent in 1947, about 83% of the Indian population was living in rural areas and most of the Indians were illiterate (over 88%). Adult education was the main focus for extension at that time and the agricultural extension programmes, obviously, were mostly designed considering this mass scale rural illiteracy, focusing on interventions aimed at improving the functional literacy among rural adults. However, over the years, the literacy rates have gone up and in 2011, it stands at 74.04%. The rural youth are now more literate, aware, educated and many are looking for new livelihood options including migrating to urban areas. Here lies the importance of developing extension programmes for youth, who are the future farmers. Head of family vs Youth: Most of the agricultural extension programmes which we implemented since independence in India traditionally targeted the head of families for training and technology transfer. In extension studies too, we consider the head of family, mostly male, as the respondent, though in every diffusion-adoption study we found the early adopters to be younger. Youth are more techno-savvy and they could access information and knowledge promoted through the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) which uses computer, internet and mobiles. Young farmers often have greater capacity for innovation, imagination, initiative and entrepreneurship than older adults and these characteristics should be effectively harnessed by extension services to provide better livelihood opportunities for youth in agriculture. Agricultural extension services should tap the energy and creativity of rural youth to transform agricultural sector. Dr Mahesh Chander Head Division of Extension Education Indian Veterinary research Institute, Izatnagar (UP) India Phone +91 581 2302391, Fax: +91 581 2303284 Email: Mahesh64 (at) email.com Youth: Potential target for agricultural extension. Mahesh Chander, AESA Blog, http://aesa-gfras.net/blog.aspx?id=59&title=Youth:%20Potential%20Target%20For%20Agricultural%20Extension [To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information, see http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/news/detail/en/c/264776/ ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the RAS-L list, click the following link: https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=RAS-L&A=1