Abstract
The Training and Visit Programme (T & VP) has recently been launched all over the Punjab after considering its superiority over the conventional one in mini-mizing the gap between the farmer and the field stall particularly the Field Assis-tants. Keeping in view the important role of Field Assistants under this new system, their effectiveness needs to be determined. Thus the present study was undertaken in 20 randomly selected villages of Vehari Tehsil and 200 contact farmers were in-terviewed at random. The analysis of data revealed that most of the respondents were not fully satisfied with the level of knowledge of Field Assistants. It was also disclosed that the Field Assistants neither arranged sufficient meetings nor took farmers to the demonstration plots frequently. Thus, the difference between the conventional and T & VP cannot be regarded as significant.
INTRODUCTION
Agriculture, being the main stay of Pakistan's economy, has always been treated preferably by every government. As a result of various steps taken from time to time by the government, overall crop production has shown an increasing trend in the country. However, the production of wheat, gram and minor crops lagged behind the planned target (Anonymous, 1988-89) and thus food requirements were net out through imports. The said situation is not encouraging for a country having agro-based economy and it demands a thorough probe into the factors responsible. Jaivi (1981) identified agricul-tural extension services as one of the key factors contributing to low and stagnant production in 1970i-77 period. The limited number or agriculture field staff and scat-tered rural areas may be the main constraints in the timely dissemination of the latest reco-
mmendations. So to overcome the said problem another system of Agricultural Ex-tension termed as 'training and visit pro-gramme' (T & VP) was initiated in five se-lected districts of the Punjab in 1978. On the recommendations of the evaluation cell in 1987, the said programme has been started in whole of the Punjab by replacing the old extension system. The most important and distinguishing characteristics of the said programme are pinpointed as narrowing the gap and strengthening the contacts between the farmers and extension field staff partic-ularly the Field Assistants. In this system, one Union Council at the minimum or 100 farm families have been put under the juris-diction of one Field Assistant, besides allo-cating 50 early adopters as the contact farm-ers to each Field Assistant for fortnightly training programme
