In most developing nations, people work mostly in agriculture, which is essential for the process of development. Various communication channels are required to improve agricultural production. Information processing and dissemination have played a critical role in the transformation process.

In terms of area and productivity, rice is one of the most important food crops in the world (Goud and Ram 2018). In 2021, area under rice was 45.77 million hectares in India having production of 124.37 million tonnes with productivity of 2,717 kg/ha (Anon 2023). In financial year 2021, rice production across the northern-most state of Jammu and Kashmir in India amounted to 581.5 million metric tonnes. West Bengal was the largest producer of rice in the country during that year (Anon 2021).

Good information dissemination behaviour (IDB) of the farmers is very important for information gathering and spreading. Thus the IDB of rice growers was studied in Barmulla district of Jammu and Kashmir.

The study was conducted in five sub-divisions namely Pattan, Sopore, Tangmarg, Baramulla and Rohamma in the Baramulla district, Kashmir valley (Fig 1) which was under rice Seed Village Programme from 2018 to 2020. Ex-post facto research design was used in this study as the incidents had already occurred. A total of 310 growers from the Seed Village Programme participated in the study. The data were collected in a systematic manner and the findings were analyzed using percentages, frequencies, means and standard deviation.

The actions taken by rice growers to spread information about rice farming were operationalized as information output/dissemination behaviour.

The IDB of rice farmers was evaluated as per their reaction to the information they were provided. The categories ‘regularly’, ‘occasionally’, ‘rarely’ and ‘never’ were rated 3, 2, 1 and 0 respectively on a four-point scale. The respondents were separated into groups based on the total scores obtained by them while calculating their IDB (Table 1).

After combining all of the related response scores together, the final scores for IDB were determined. Based on their mean and standard deviation, the respondents were categorized into 3 groups.

Data given in Table 2 (Fig 2) depict that in sub-division Pattan, majority of growers (71.43%) had medium, 15.71 per cent had low and only 12.86 per cent had high level of IDB. In the Sopore sub-division, 65.92, 20.00 and 14.08 per cent had medium, high and low level of IDB respectively. The majority (91.67%) of growers, in the sub-division Tangmarg, possessed medium, while 8.33 per cent possessed high level of IDB. In Baramulla, 68.50, 16.43 and 15.07 per cent farmers possessed medium, low and high level respectively and in Rohamma sub-division, 70.00, 20.00 and 10.00 per cent of them expressed medium, low and high level of IDB respectively. In overall, 69.03, 16.13 and 14.84 per cent of the rice growers from all five sub-divisions had medium, high and low level of IDB respectively. It shows that majority of the growers, in all the sub-divisions of the district, had medium level of IDB.

Under studied sub-divisions, highest medium level IDB was recorded at Tangmarg (91.67%) followed by Pattan (71.43%), Rohamma (70.00) and Baramulla (68.50%) and lowest at Sopore (65.92%). This trend might be because a majority of the farmers frequently used the information dissemination channels like discussions with extension functionaries and progressive farmers, participation in the farmers’ training programmes and watching TV programmes.

In a study, conducted on maize growers of Perambalur district of Tamil Nadu, Kasidurai and Vengatesan (2017) reported more than fifty per cent of the respondents (56.66%) under medium level of IDB followed by low (26.67%) and high (16.67%) level categories respectively. Naresh et al (2021) conducted a study on the information acquisition behaviour of rice growers under Seed Village Programme in five sub-divisions of Baramulla district. The majority of the rice growers from all the five sub-divisions had medium level of information acquisition behaviour. Highest information acquisition behaviour was found in sub-division Tangmarg (75%) followed by Sopore (70.38%), Baramulla (69.87%) and Pattan (68.58%) and lowest in Rohamma (65%). Across all five sub-divisions, 69.68 per cent respondents had medium level information acquisition behaviour.

Kalidasan (2019), while studying the information management behaviour (IMB) of sugarcane growers, found that majority of the farmers belonged to medium category (60.00%). Anwar et al (2017) conducted a study in Kannur district of Kerala, to assess the IMB of rice farmers under the collective farming project of Kudumbashree mission. The results showed that majority of the women rice farmers belonged to medium category of IMB.

Gaud and Ram (2018) reported that in Imphal West district, majority (65.00%) of rice growers belonged to medium, 19.17 per cent to low and 15.83 per cent to high communication behaviour. In a study conducted by Prashanth et al (2012) reported that majority of the respondents (48.33%) fell under medium category followed by high (30.83%) and low (20.83%).

It was concluded that, under studied sub-divisions, highest medium level IDB was recorded at Tangmarg (91.67%) followed by Pattan (71.43%), Rohamma (70.00) and Baramulla (68.50%) and lowest at Sopore (65.92%). Most of the rice growers fell under medium category of IDB. Most of the growers depended on telephone calls and discussions with progressive farmers and extension agents in one-to-one interaction. For group contact, they depended on farmer training programmes, demonstrations and field tests. For majority of growers, mass contact, agricultural exhibitions/farmer fairs, TV shows and radio shows were sources of agricultural information. Still there was need to spread more authentic agricultural information to the farmers using different information channels for increasing their information dissemination behaviour.

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