INTRODUCTION The farm magazines are regarded as the important source of agricultural information for literate farmers and also for the farmers who passively get benefit from it. Increase in literacy rate in the country offers new prospects and promises for the utilization of printed literature as a source of information on Agricultural technologies. In Telangana urban literacy rate is 23.4 percentage points higher than rural literacy, and Andhra Pradesh, where the difference is 19.2 percentage points. (NSO, 2019). According to the Indian Readership Survey for Q1 of 2019 the penetration of dailies in urban India remained the same as it was in 2017, which is 53 per cent. However, in rural India it grew from 31 per cent to 32 per cent. Even though the transfer of agricultural information through the internet and electronic media is going hype, the credibility of information is high for magazines when compared to electronic media. In order to provide users with quality and timely information, and make them believe in the farm magazines, it is necessary to maintain the credibility of information as well as information providers. The effectiveness of farm magazines depends on the attitude and perception of readers towards farm magazines and its components. Therefore, to study the perception of readers towards farm magazines and compare the effectiveness of two farm magazines namely Vyavasayam and Annadata published by Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University and private agency (Eenadu publications) were selected respectively for the study. The study was concentrated on assessing the effectiveness as perceived by readers and comparing the different components of effectiveness of both the farm magazines. METHODOLOGY The state of Telanagana with three agro-climatic zones (Northern, Central and Southern Telangana zones) waspurposively chosen for the study. From each zone, one district namely, Warangal from Central Telangana zone, Nagar kurnool from Southern Telangana zone and Jagtial from Northern Telangana zone were selected purposively.Two prominent Telugu farm magazines which are having wide circulation in the state were selected for the study.List of subscribers for the selected two magazines were collected from the respective publishing agencies for the selected districts. From the list 120 respondents are selected by simple random sampling method. In order to satisfy the required number of sample size and keeping in view the principles of statistics from each magazine 60 respondents were selected for the study for each magazine i.e., 20 from each of the selected three districts. Thus constitute 120 respondents for the study. Structured interview schedule comprising of 6 components namely, format, title, content, illustration and tables, cost effectiveness and usefulness of topics covered (Savaliya, 2008) and measured on 5 point continuum namely, highly satisfied, moderately satisfied, satisfied, least satisfied and not satisfied with the weight of 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 respectively. After combining the total score of the respondents of each magazine separately, the data of both the respondents was pooled and then categorized into low, medium and high category separately and accordingly the components were ranked. Later based on their obtained scores comparison was made among the Vyavasayam and Annadata farm magazines. The effectiveness scores of each component were subjected to Z-test analysis to study the significant difference between different components of two magazines. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The results in the Table 1 indicated that, the readers of Vyavasayam magazine were mostly satisfied with the colour and design of cover page (4.82 in the format component. Annadata readers were satisfied with colour and design of cover page (4.8) and less satisfied with quality of papers inside the farm magazine (3.97). The readers of vyavasayam magazine were highly satisfied with the relevancy of caption (4.83) and less satisfied with relevancy of subtitles (4.43 in the title component. In case of Annadata magazine readers relevancy of caption (4.83) ranked first and title font (4.3) ranked last (V). Vyavasayam magazine was slightly more effective in title component compared to Annadata magazine because Vyavasayam magazine publishers were using catchy titles and title font which attracted the interested of readers. Vyavasayam readers ranked credibility of the messages (4.8) first in the content component and novelty (3.08) and adequacy (2.87) of messages ranked second last (XIII) and last (XIV). In case of Annadata magazine, readers ranked relevancy of messages to season (4.72) first and market orientation of messages (3.58) last (XIII). Vyavasayam magazine was less effective in content component compared to Vyavasayam magazine because the farmers might have felt that the content was not new and it has been repeated. If the content aspects are not relevant, timely and inadequate, then the other components also will not be liked by readers. The readers of vyavasayam magazine ranked usefulness of illustrations and tables (4.62) first and size of illustrations and tables (4.23) last (VII). Annadata readers ranked relevancy of illustrations (4.77) first and clarity of illustrations (4.06) last (VII). Annadata magazine was slightly more effective in illustrations and tables component compared to Vyavasayam magazine because the readers might have felt that Annadata magazine was using attractive, relevant and compatible illustrations compared to Vyavasayam. The readers of vyavasayam magazine were satisfied with affordability of the magazine (4.83) followed by value for money (4.65). Same was seen in the case of Annadata magazine (4.92, affordability; 4.7, value for money). Annadata magazine was slightly more effective in cost effectiveness component compared to Vyavasayam magazine. The readers of Vyavasayam magazine ranked content on crop production (4.78) first and weather information (2.68 and food and nutrition aspects (2.07) second last (XV) and last (XVI) in the order of ranking whereas, in case of Annadata magazine, the readers ranked horticulture (4.77) first and weather information (2.5) and food and nutrition aspects (2.17) second last (XIV) and last (XV) respectively. Annadata magazine was effective in usefulness of topics covered component compared to Vyavasayam magazine as the readers of Vyavasayam magazine might have felt that the Vyavasayam publishers were not providing enough information on post-harvest management and value addition, animal husbandry and farm machinery due to their mandate or other information constraints and the information was inadequate on these aspects. It is clear from the Table 2 that the readers of Vyavasayam were highly satisfied with the cost effectiveness of the farm magazine followed by titles, format, illustrations and tables, content and usefulness of content covered in the order of ranking whereas, Annadata readers were highly satisfied with the cost effectiveness followed by illustrations and tables, titles, format, content and usefulness of content covered. Cost effectiveness was ranked first in both the magazines. This indicated the importance of provision of qualitative information at affordable prices and the readers don’t mind paying money for getting quality information. Whereas content and usefulness of topics covered ranked last and second last respectively. The reason might be less market orientation of the messages, old repeated information and inadequate information on various items like market intelligence, animal husbandry ad extension and government schemes. Hence more information on these aspects needs to be provided so that the content will be more useful to the readers. From the data in the Table 3 it can be seen that majority (50.00 %) of the vyavasayam readers perceived the magazine as moderately effective followed by highly effective (30.0 %) and less effective (20.00%). The results were on par with results of Parmar and Kumar (2020). Majority (58.3 %) of the Annadata readers perceives the farm magazine as highly effective (58.33 %) followed by moderately effective (30.00 %) and less effective (11.66 %). It can be concluded from the above table that Annadata magazine was perceived as highly effective compared to Vyavasayam magazine. The results were in collaboration with Archana (2013). It can be observed from the table 4. that there was a significant difference in the effectiveness of titles, content, illustrations and tables and usefulness of topics covered between the Annadata and Vyavasayam farm magazine whereas, there was no significant difference in format and cost effectiveness component of farm magazines. No significant difference was seen because both the magazines were equally effective in the format component and providing magazines at competitive prices.