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FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK 
Wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year!

 The “International Agricultural Extension Academy” is part of the College 
of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis, USA. The academy has 
recently formulated a guide entitled “ASK ME” to help extension professionals 
plan and implement a development programme. This guide has been based 
on interactions and discussions with more than 1,000 farmers, extension and 
development workers in more than 25 countries.

  “ASK ME” provides a framework for the different extension methods 
(Commodity-based 2. Cost-Sharing 3. Educational Institution 4. Farmer Field Schools 
5. Farmer Participatory 6. Farming Systems 7. Centralized 8. Land Grant (in US) 9. 
Project 10. Training and Visit) to be implemented: 
1. Audience - understand and engage the audience, 2. Solutions - find appropriate 
solutions, 3. Key message – identify the key message 4. Message form and delivery 
- package and deliver the needed information in forms appropriate to the audience 
and, 5. Evaluation - improve the overall process.
 Further, in one of his recent articles, Mark Bell, the academy’s Director, has 
identified three elements required for the success of ICTs for agricultural extension 
and advisory services. He has termed them as the A.I.D factors:

A – Available. The information has to be easily available.
 This is possible when people receive the same message from multiple and 
distinct sources. Integration of communication channels makes the message more 
believable.

I - Interest. Do people want to learn more?
 The information should to meet peoples’ interests & needs and the clientele 
need to trust the extension functionaries.  Further, the information that is being 
shared needs to be “right”, “logical” and “emotional”, if it has to lead to a behavioural 
change. 

D - Doable. Can people act?
 The clientele need to be able to easily test and do something with the 
information. The extension functionaries need to make sure that the instructions 
are simple and clear for the farmers to act upon. 

 This issue of JEE contains papers on different topics such as 
entrepreneurship motivation, ICT, Self-Help Groups and social capital formation. 
I thank the associate editors and the reviewers for their kind help in bringing out 
this issue of JEE.

 

Chief Editor