AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE AWARENESS REGARDING THE SOURCE OF INFORMATION AMONG THE FARMING COMMUNITY THROUGH PUBLIC SECTOR AND NGOs IN NWFP, PAKISTAN

Farmer s use of different sources of information is an important way in the adoption-diffusion research in extension education. The required data was collected from three hundred randomly selected farmers from ten union councils of Kohat district during 2007. The data included all types of respondents i.e. age below 30 years(26%), 30 to 40 years (24.67%) and above 40 years (49.33%),with educational status illiterate (39.67%), literate up to primary (15%), middle (27.33%), metric and above (18%) and having land below 20 acres (50%), 20 to 40 acres (16.67%) and above 40 acres (33.33%). Many studies called awareness as pre-requisite to every technology and the first step toward adoption. It is generally believed that the source of knowledge is an important tool for awareness and guidance of respondents towards adoption to modern technologies .A variety of sources of information would make it easy to the farming community in consulting and providing opportunities to contact different sources of knowledge for awareness and increasing their interest. In this paper we look at the relative significance of various sources of available information a factors effecting the role of Public Sector and NGO in NWFP, Pakistan .Farmers are getting information from print media, institutional sources, NGOs, local mobilizer, hujra and pesticides and seed dealers. Depicted from the results, the respondents prioritized the source of information as Public extension department (1st), NGO (2nd) and radio (3rd).