Disruptive extension - An apt option for sustainable fisheries

Abstract

Since last two decades, the role of agriculture extension system in global scenario has undergone a radical change. in technology diffusion process. On the basis of the nature of different farm technologies in respect of their design, integration and application; various TOT models have been tested and robust extension approaches have been validated across diverse agroclimatic situations, socio-cultural settings and adaptation framework. The paradigm shifts in the frontline extension system, emphasized on moving beyond technology and beyond commodity concentrating more on farmercentric approaches by ensuring strong farmers-research-extension linkages for technology dissemination, that ushered in farmers’-led, demand-driven and market-led extension, which can ensure food, nutrition and livelihood security leading to sustainable development. Global fisheries have made rapid strides in recent years by establishing its strong hold over increasing food supply, generating job opportunities, raising nutritional level and earning foreign exchanges; thus significantly envisioning food security and adequate nutrition for a global population expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050. But this trade-driven, resource depletion sector needs to be sustained amidst challenges of climate change, dwindling fishery resources and population stress, so that fish farmers can adjust their production portfolio keeping eye upon the emerging trends in food consumerism in domestic as well as global markets. The apt option to meet these challenges is ‘disruptive extension’, an innovative extension approach that eventually adjusts an existing approach to the way the farmers learn. It is an entrepreneurial oriented sustainable extension system which facilitates the community with information support, social insurance, resource accessibility and resource affiliation that can able to transform every link in the food chain, from farm to fork. It is a cost-recovery extension approach, the fulcrum of which lies between resource exploitation on one side and resource conservation on another side that influence the livelihood security of small scale farm holders through sustainable fisheries.